The fallout from the Amazon purchase of Goodreads continues. This morning, from his new home in the Cook Islands, Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler issued a statement saying that he is retroactively withdrawing all public remarks and data shared at conferences and on panels the last seven years. He added that he would like to deny that the move has anything to do with the Amazon purchase but hadn't yet been cleared to say so by the corporate communications department in Seattle.
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| image: 21st century wire | |
In other Amazon news, reports have surfaced that the retailer's recent 10-year, $600-million agreement with the CIA to build a secure cloud for the agency has a secret protocol: Amazon is making an investment in the CIA, buying a 10% interest each year, which even using Amazon math, means it will own the spy agency after a decade.
CIA director John O. Brennan said that the deal made sense because, as he put it, "Thanks to Wall Street, which the poverty-stricken federal government bailed out, Amazon has more money than god, money that we can use."
For his part, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, "We see this as a new model for a public-private partnership--and how appropriate that we finally make the Company a company. The mutual benefits are enormous: we can teach them about secrecy and fudging numbers while they can teach us that there are other ways to neutralize the competition besides buying them."
Bezos also indicated that he's particularly interested in commercial adaptation of the agency's drone program. "We foresee a kind of ultrafast, combined weapons and product delivery service," he said. "It will be the ultimate in customer choice: accept Amazon or meet your maker." --John Mutter