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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Is that what's happening at Amazon as well? As they seemingly is loosing more and more track of the "Customer Obsession" schtick.

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"customer obsession" was always at the mercy of the real obsession: "making money hand over fist". The former will ALWAYS lose out to the latter given enough cycles.

Yeah, "customer obsession" really just means "market share / growth obsession" which is a means to (eventually) making monopoly profits. Which Amazon seems to have achieved.

One may follow the other, but not vice versus.

It's a pretty strong argument to say that Microsoft under Gates was technically obsessed, but that really faltered under Balmer.

Microsoft continued to win profits, but they made major strategic missteps that cost the revenue.

Amazon feels like it's going down the same path: empowering the tree-gazers without remembering that the forest also matters.

You can also “coast upwards” for quite awhile - as an example we now pay Microsoft less than we were for periodic upgrades to Office for the entire Microsoft 365 suite (including email hosting, etc) but all the machines are now Macs. They make more from us in one way, but less in total dollars.

Exactly. I can't imagine some accountant hasn't come up with a way to quantify this.

{Revenue attributable to previous R&D} (aka coast) vs {Revenue attributable to current R&D} (aka acceleration)

All the amazon corporate values are derived from making profit. Two-pizza teams? More like "three slices isn't frugal", one or two should be enough for you.

They are encouraging their customers to have a bias toward action. Away from that asshole Bezos.

Their mission hasn't changed. They're still obsessed with customers, just not the way you think.

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