Jeff Bezos steps down as Amazon CEO!

Jeff Bezos is to withdraw himself as Chief Executive of the e-commerce giant Amazon (CEO of Amazon) that he founded in a garage about 30 years ago.

He will be serving as an Executive Chairman instead, saying that this decision would give him “time and energy” to look after his other businesses in addition to best wishes to AWS chief Andy Jassy.

The word’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos will be succeeded by Andy Jassy. Jassy has been part of the company since 1997, and is currently supervising the company’s biggest profit generator venture, Amazon Web Services as the perfect fit.

The transition of positions will be enforced in the second half of this year, according to Amazon.

Bezos has been in a seat of authority at Amazon since its inception. He turned the company from a small online book store to a global online retailer worth $1.7 trillion, which also placed him in the list of world’s richest individuals.

Jassy has also been part of the company since 1997 and he is serving the company’s biggest profit generator business, Amazon Web Services.

Bezos announced his decision in a letter he wrote to his employees on Tuesday. “This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name.” he wrote.

“The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, ‘What’s the internet?’… Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.”

The news came just after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report. According to the reports, Amazon has recorded its first ever $100 billion quarter benchmark, as the lockdown-situation boosted its sales and cloud businesses in the previous year. The company’s stock has increased to about 69% over the last year.

Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer, said in an interview via telephone that the change in management was decided in discussion with Amazon’s board of directors. He said that Bezos will remain involved in the company’s matters all along.

According to him, Jassy is going to be a visionary leader who will run the company with the help of his own set of skills and knowledge.

Bezos assured his employees that he will stay involved in crucial Amazon projects and will also have enough time to focus on his other ventures such as Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin Spaceship Company, The Washington Post, and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.

“As much as I still tap dance into the office, I’m excited about this transition,” he wrote in the letter. “Millions of customers depend on us for our services and more than a million employees depend on us for their livelihoods.” He explained that being in charge of the company is a very big and time-consuming responsibility, and you can’t pay your attention to anything else except it.

After the news, Amazon’s competitors took to social media to congratulate Bezos and Jassy and wish them luck for the transition. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, commented on Jassy’s promotion saying “well-deserved.”

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google,  also congratulated Jassy.

The change in Amazon’s leadership comes as a real surprise. Don’t forget that Jeff Bezos is still the world’s second richest man with a net worth of around 200 million dollars.

With that amount of money, he can do anything! Now that Bezos’ space rocket business “Blue Origin” has more of his attention, it would be interesting to see who’s going to be the next leader of space. He previously noted that he wants to “build a road to space.”

But what about Amazon? How the company will cope without him?

Well, he is not entirely withdrawing himself from the company’s matters. He is going to be there as Executive Chairman, so we don’t think this transition would bring any harm to the overall company’s productivity. It’s too early to comment, so let’s just see how this transition turns out.

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