Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Issues Apology

Posted by | 07/23/2009 | 6 Comments

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos issued the following apology for the 1984 / Kindle wipeout act that was all the talk this past weekend. The apologies certainly don’t get any more honest and humble than this one. Somehow, I don’t think Amazon will be making that mistake again:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

via Engadget

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Category: Accessories, Mobile

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  • http://www.notebooks.com Xavier

    I’ve always admired how Bezos conducts himself and his company. I only wish more execs would follow in his footsteps of issuing such apologies when their companies mess up.

  • http://www.quillaja.net Ben

    i agree. it’s ok to make mistakes, especially when you’re dealing with uncharted territory, like e-books. but when you’ve made a mistake, accept it and make amends, instead of just steamrolling over everyone.

    on an unrelated note, i read today that Bezos has a startup company in commercial spaceflight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin). how sweet is that? i wish i had $20 million to take a space ride.

  • GoodThings2Life

    @Rob and Xavier, I agree… Bezos definitely seems like a decent human being and a hell of CEO.

    @Ben, yeah, if I had $20 million to spend, that’d be near the top of my list! :)

  • Nate

    I like the apology. It seems sincere.

    However, I would have liked it more if he had worked the words, “It will never happen again,” in there.

  • http://www.notebooks.com Xavier Lanier

    @Nate, never say never :-) A company the size of Amazon is sure to run into more SNAFUs

  • Holmes Wilson

    Re: In response to Amazon’s remote deletion of 1984 and Animal Farm

    Hi there,

    Saw you’d written about the Amazon / 1984 flap, and I thought you might be
    interested in the petition we launched yesterday:

    http://defectivebydesign.org/amazon1984

    We have over 1400 signatures already, and signers include Lawrence Lessig,
    Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow and other notable authors, librarians, and
    scholars.

    The petition opens:

    “We believe in a way of life based on the free exchange of ideas, in which
    books have and will continue to play a central role. Devices like Amazon’s
    are trying to determine how people will interact with books, but Amazon’s
    use of DRM to control and monitor users and their books constitutes a clear
    threat to the free exchange of ideas.”

    Please have a look, and if you support the cause or think it would be
    interesting to your readers, a blog post would be great!

    Thanks,

    -Holmes Wilson
    Free Software Foundation

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