On July 6, 1999, 60 Minutes profiled a burgeoning tech company nestled in a dirty corner of downtown Seattle beside a Teriyaki joint, a pawnshop, and a porn store. Although the company was already worth $30 billion by then, its CEO still used a shabby office complete with a rickety table, stained carpets, and a spray-painted sign tacked to the wall reading: Amazon.com.
As ESPN's Darren Rovell notes, the 1999 profile is dizzying if only because that Honda-driving CEO, Jeff Bezos, "boosted his net worth by more than $30B in 2018 alone." Worth more than $600 billion today, Amazon has come a long way from the '90s in more ways than one — embracing a future of cashierless grocery stores, terrifying home assistant technology, and delivery people who can enter your home when you aren't there. Even Amazon's grungy downtown HQ has been replaced by an open-office rainforest.
Come for the technological whiplash and stay for references to "350 floppy discs worth" of information. Watch below. Jeva Lange
The Week
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