caroline: from bloomberg's world headquarters in new york and from right here in london, i am caroline hyde. romaine: we saw another update for the s&p 500 index. two days of back-to-back gains. caroline: if you worried that the slightly nothing news cycle might end in any way, you would

be wrong. instead, we had this great show lined up to talk about where in the world game stock and amc were going to go but we ripped up that script because the man who made e-commerce what it is, the man who built the giant of amazon, created the infrastructure of the internet with aws, jeff bezos, he is handing over the reins of power, the ceo, and the third quarter he becomes the chairman. joe: it seems pretty clear that they just have to make changes to address this gamestop threat. they are looking at their leadership and they are like -- i assume. we are going to talk to some experts so i assume they will say the same thing. romaine: i appreciate the levity. joe: for more, she has covered

amazon and bezos for a long time , how surprised are you? >> he was going to have to step away at some point but no one thought it would be the definition of a bombshell to drop on and earnings day. caroline: what a bombshell. two sentences in the entire press release. what do you make the transition from the third quarter in 2021 to be the chairman. quick setting this is clearly following the microsoft model. bill gates stepped down to take an advisory role. bezos will not be involved quite so much in the day today but when he can look over the shoulder and shepherded new initiatives, that is something he likes to do and is passionate about.

romaine: kind of interesting, we have seen some transition and some of these big cap tech companies. i am curious about the new ceo and what you know about him and what he brings to the table. >> andy jassy has been with amazon for a long time. at one point, he was jeff bezos 's technical advisor, where he learned the ropes from the big boss. data-driven guy, very decisive when he wants to move on something and spies an opportunity. the amazon unit that he led his far and away the leader in the market, amazon web services. it is may be conventional wisdom at this point that if jeff bezos did ever step down, and andy jassy would be the guy to fill issues.

joe: obviously, aws a big cash gusher for the company for quite some time. in terms of what amazon under a new ceo would look like, do you think there would be different investments, areas they would pull back on? what do we expect the new amazon to look like? >> it is a great question. given andy jassy's similarities to bezos. kind of a parlor game among amazon analysts, will they are one-day spin off the cloud business. is it too different from retail? i think you certainly said how integral it is to the other side of the operations. romaine: we have kind of ignored the numbers for obvious reasons today but you are talking about a quarter above 100 billion

dollars. a relatively stable forecast and of course that continues growth in web services. when you talk about the future of this company, is it going to be a diversified company or is it going to be web services? matt: it certainly looks diversified. retail is turning it out now. the cloud is doing well for them. they have a growing advertising business. they are getting into all areas of logistics. amazon seems to meet the definition of conglomerate. joe: great stuff. really appreciate you joining us. continuing on this, we are joined by the host of bloomberg technology, emily chang. your initial reactions. emily: you have heard from matt, you have heard from brad. it is quite surprising. if anyone was going to take over

from jeff bezos it probably would be andy jassy. no one expected this to happen so soon. it has been an incredibly successful business. he is fiercely loyal, he has been there since almost the very beginning with jeff himself. and he is just as relentlessly customer focused. i interviewed andy in a longform interview a couple of years ago and he has just got that run less commitment to customers but also the fact that he was leading a business that was only going to get bigger and bigger as the cloud group. we do know that jeff wilkie, was running amazon's consumer unit, left last year. at the time, we asked, does this have anything to do with succession. they both said, absolutely not. now, looking back that perhaps the writing was on the wall and

that it would indeed be andy jaffe taking over. certainly big news and it interrupted my phone call with the ceo of alphabet, we were talking to as this news broke. caroline: one more thought on amazon, your perspective. andy jassy has -- facial recognition and some of the products and use cases. he will come up against more and more focus in terms of the competitive nature of amazon. we have seen jeff bezos up in front of the partition. how do you think the future will be guided by someone like andy jassy? emily: you're right, amazon as well as many big tech companies, are facing antitrust group from both sides of the aisle. biden's administration cannot avoid it. jeff bezos, we saw him be quite

combative with trump administration, as you referenced, dragged for congress. i think andy jesse will continue as the company was led. data-driven, growing that business, but now it is not just amazon well -- not just amazon web services come all of amazon. the power is under scrutiny. romaine: we did get those alphabet results which sort of got lost in the shuffle. before you head dan up with ruth porat -- had to hang up with ruth porat, what did she tell you? emily: we were focused on any color in the numbers, advertiser behavior now that everyone got used to the initial shock of the pandemic. she said that they believed all the growth they had seen it online at eddie will hold up

post pandemic as well. we talked about cloud. google, a huge competitor to amazon web services. profitability that is elusive. she indicated that google will continue to invest in growing that business and meeting what they see is a huge, totally addressable market. we also talked a little bit about antitrust. the big fear for a company like google and amazon, as they fight these antitrust battles, what happens to company culture. we saw complete -- we saw company culture really sell for -- really suffer when they were fighting antitrust battles. other employees. a very rosy outlook. even when the pandemic subsides she think growth will be back.

romaine: you can check out emily chang at the top of the hour on bloomberg technology. i am sure she will be on top of all of those stories. when we come back, joe is going to sort of complete that conspiracy theory of how amazon and gamestop are linked together. this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: rip up the script because we now have a new ceo to be taking the helmet amazon as of the third quarter. it is going to be andy jaffe taking the reins, moving to the ceo role as jeff bezos takes over as chairman to lead the

ship further onshore. we have been talking gamestop and these rocket ships for however long. phenomenal 21,000, even more than that. hundreds of thousands of percentage point increases in where the share price has gone. my brain is not quite going as fast as it should be. 38% per annum is basically what you are averaging out at. phenomenal growth overall in terms of holding a stock. joe: he has been the ceo for a really long time. public since 1996. 27 or 28 years. that is a long time to have a job. we are used to these gigantic tech companies as being these kingdoms that emanate around the

ceo in a way that we don't necessarily see with a lot of other public companies that are not so defined by their ceo. in any other industry, it would be a very long run. romaine: when you look at a lot of the tech companies from that era, they have all transitioned for one reason or another. apple, microsoft, alphabet, and the other. he'll be interesting to see how all of this shakes out. for more, let's bring in brad stone. he posted -- he basically wrote the book on amazon. thank you for coming back to the program. give us your initial thoughts on what jeff bezos's main legacy in your mind is going to be. >> first of all, i think we should say the legacy is not done. he sent this letter to employees that he is going to conto

work on new products. we do have a new amazon book coming out in may. alexa, the hollywood stuff, this was all bezos working with his team. he has allowed the more mature segments of the business. as for the legacy, it is incredible. can you think of anyone who has made more of an impact on our everyday economic reality than jeff bezos. he has built a company worth 1.7 trillion dollars. he has changed the way we shop, the way we read, the way companies and governments conduct their businesses, in the cloud. he has changed business culture in the way a lot of people have talked about.

the use of contractors instead of employees, and a little bit of a tough productivity-minded, kind of relentless culture that people i think are familiar with. the high turnover at amazon has been somewhat controversial. lots to chew on. i expect that we will continue to be hearing about his work at amazon, and blue origin, space, and philanthropy for years. joe: obviously, amazon, not just the long-term performance but even the short-term performance, every quarter is better than what people expected. is there anything amazon needs to work on? any challenges, areas that have not thrived as much as others have expected, or does it just continue to be awesome?

>> i think what we saw last summer, a house committee, amazon just fighting tooth and nail to keep jeff bezos from testifying, then ultimately relenting, and he was able to phone it in like the others. he has been a reluctant ceo when it comes to the regulatory screwed. i think unlike tim cook or mark zuckerberg, jeff bezos may be does not feel like he wants to spend the time on that. i think his reluctance hurts the company. ultimately, as we saw during the trump administration, his ownership of the washington post and of hurting the company. amazon arguably lost a $10 billion contract with the pentagon because he owns the washington post. i they get is that, that amazon

as a group comes under such screwed me. that is its future, battling it out in washington, and brussels. bezos is an inventor. he likes working on the frontier of technology. he does not necessarily want to be the guy in the hot seat. caroline: i am sure he will be dragged out in front of a few congress panels. he is almost inseparable from amazon as he remains chair, as he remains founder. he will always be tied up really with the payments in some way. men davis associating with the transition we side microsoft. how much more of a hands-on approach do you think he might have, or do you think we might see him peel off just for me political element, do you think? >> i think there are some useful

juxtapositions. at google, larry and survey have at least two our knowledge just really disappeared. over at microsoft, bill gates is really far more invested in his philanthropy and all the great stuff that the gates foundation is doing. if i recall correctly, he spends maybe a day a month at microsoft. i think jeff bezos will be much more involved. he talks about still working on new products. he is the inventor in chief at amazon. i was just on a media call for earnings. the ceo was talking about how they will continue to go to jeff for what they call in amazon speak as one way doors, decisions that have a kind of permanence about them. what that adds up to as an executive chairman, still the spiritual leader of the company, silly founder. dave clark, who took over for jeff wilkie.

i don't think he is going anywhere. continues to be kind of synonymous with the company. romaine: they will be a lot of challenges that go beyond just building a business. you have antitrust issues hanging over it, investors who have called for the separation of certain businesses. i guess the challenge is to sort of appeal to a wide variety of different forces that will be trying to pull him in different directions in a way that bezos did not have to deal with for the first 15 or 20 years of his enterprise. >> that is true. you get a kind of may invincibility as founder-ceo. you are jeff bezos. you're never going to have a shareholder activist trying to recruit other shareholders to force your hand to do things you say like producing a dividend or spinning off aws.

you are asking, will they challenge andy jesse? he does not have jeff's shareholder position. he does not own nearly as much stock in the company and he does not have that aura of being the founder, but he has jeff as an ally. as long as that remains true, i don't think any of these outside calls, i don't think they are -- they have to listen to that. in that respect, i don't think much changes. amazon has the benefit of constantly positive stock performance. as long as that continues, i don't think any calls for changes in the way amazon is run are going to be heeded. romaine: you have to move up the lunch date for this book now, don't you? >> i am already telling myself i am trying to get it out in may.

maybe it is more timely. but, in a way, i get to reflect on what has been a tremendous last 10 years for bezos as ceo. caroline: if you can't wait, i'm sure you have read it, but get your hands on the everything store, which is the book brad wrote originally. i get so much for spending so much time analyzing this move for us. plenty more coming up after this break. this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: well, that was a quiet day. not. we were expecting amazon and alphabet earnings. we were not expecting the changing of the guard. andy jesse becomingly ceo to take the helm. romaine: it looks like there

will be a lot of continuity here. jeff bezos sticking around to the third quarter and after that, stay on as executive chairman. andy jesse, basically a guy who is a lifer as far as i can tell. he obviously knows it inside out. based on the assessment we have gotten from our guest so far, that he is up to the task. it will be interesting whether he does try to take the company in a different direction of the path they have been on. joe: expecting q1 net sales, the prior estimates were $95.7 billion. already sees a big beat. as brad was pointing out, there will not be a lot of pressure from anyone, regulators assigned, to do anything different, if they keep crushing expectations quarter after quarter. caroline: i think that is exactly it, the regulatory risk,

the politics that have to be navigated. aws, about 12% of the revenue of the business, mainly still e-commerce. what does it look like as we move past covid-19? romaine: i want to look at more of the regulatory issues and how good of a politician jassy will be. we know this company has a target on its back. they have a lot of issues to deal with. they have nothing to really do with cloud services. joe: a lot of questions about labor and wages and all of that stuff. caroline: we have to check out the short interest because otherwise commit could be a real -- romaine: i thought we had moved on. caroline is doing her shoulder thing again. i like that. romaine: -- caroline: try it. flip to the side.

meanwhile, that does it for "what'd you miss?" joe: bloomberg technology is next. romaine: daybreak to -- daybreak australia is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." amazon bombshell. the company says founder and ceo jeff bezos will step down to become executive chair. andy jassy, who has been running amazon web services, will become the next ceo.