The Washington Post has just been sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for $250 million, the paper announced Monday. Compared to the price that Yahoo and Google have been paying for acquisitions recently, 250 million isn't really a lot of money is it?
The purchaser is an entity that belongs to Bezos in his individual capacity and is not Amazon.com. Though I guess this is part of Jeff's media strategy. Hope he doesn't interfere editorially like Murdoch did. Even to the point where the Washington Post will still cover challenges at Amazon.
"Everyone at the Post Company and everyone in our family has always been proud of The Washington Post - of the newspaper we publish and of the people who write and produce it," said Donald E. Graham, Chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Company. "I, along with Katharine Weymouth and our board of directors, decided to sell only after years of familiar newspaper-industry challenges made us wonder if there might be another owner who would be better for the Post (after a transaction that would be in the best interest of our shareholders). Jeff Bezos' proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post."
Many people don't know that Jeff has been busy with various projects. In 2012 news broke that the Amazon founder and CEO has invested at least $42 million in a project to build a 10,000 year clock deep in the mountains near one of his homes in West Texas. The clock would play a different sound to celebrate the passing of each year for the next 10 millennia.
"The clock is a symbol for long-term thinking," he said in the interview. "If we think long-term, we can accomplish things that we couldn't otherwise accomplish." As an example, he noted that asking someone to solve world hunger in five years might sound preposterous, but doing so in 100 years might not. "All we've done there is change the time horizon, we didn't change the challenge. Time horizons matter. They matter a lot."
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