, Columnist
Amazon Baffles Investors With Meaningless Numbers
It’s supposed to look like transparency. It’s actually just gibberish.
Photographer: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
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The annual shareholder letter from Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos is closely read by technologists eager for pearls of wisdom. This year’s edition drew headlines for the surprising disclosure of the number of paying customers to Amazon's Prime shopping club. Amazon refused to disclose this Prime number for years, even after prodding by U.S. securities regulators, and it's not clear why Bezos picked this moment to spill the beans.
That wasn't the only disclosure in the Bezos letter, but all the rest were far less illuminating.