2014贝索斯致Amazon股东信全文

百晓生（BaiXiaoSheng.Net）注：每年4月，亚马逊创始人兼CEO杰夫•贝索斯就要发一封年度股东信，和大家汇报下Amazon的各项业务进展及未来的规划。2013年的汇报点这里。以下为2014年4月10日，Jeff Bezos致Amazon股东信全文的中文翻译稿和英文原文，供大家周末学习和消化。

2014贝索斯致Amazon股东信中文全文

致公司股东：

在过去一年时间里，亚马逊的所有团队为公司客户取得了很大成就，对此我深感骄傲。全球范围内的亚马逊员工都在改进产品和服务，其改进程度超出了此前预期或要求；从长期来看，这将起到重塑标准的作用，给客户带来惊喜。

我很乐意带领你们走上一段旅程，去看看我们的一系列创新计划，这些计划覆盖了从Prime到Amazon Smile乃至Mayday等各种产品和服务。这段旅程的目标是，让你们感知到亚马逊公司内部正在发生多少事情，以及让你们感觉到致力于这些项目有多么令人激动。这些覆盖范围广泛的创新计划之所以成为可能，是因为我们在各个级别上都拥有庞大的人才团队，他们每一天都在作出良好的判断，并且一直都在自问一个问题：我们如何才能做到更好？

话不多说，现在就让我们开始这段旅程吧。

Prime服务

Prime服务深受客户喜爱。单单是在2013年12月份的第三个星期，就有100多万名客户加入了Prime服务计划，目前这项服务的全球会员总数已经达到了数千万人。人均看来，Prime会员订购的物品数量高于以往任何时候，这些物品所覆盖的类别也有所增加。

即使是在公司内部，我们也很容易就会忘记一个事实，那就是当我们在9年前推出Prime服务时，它是一种新鲜的、未经实践证明的（有些人甚至会说是鲁莽蛮干的）概念：无论什么物品都提供两天内送货上门的服务，而客户只需支付很少的包年费用。在当时，符合Prime服务配送要求的产品有100万种；而在2014年，符合资格的产品种类已经达到了2,000万种，而且还在继续增加。

同时，我们还在通过其他方式来让Prime服务变得更好，为客户提供了新的数字福利，例如面向Kindle用户的Lending Library和Prime Instant Video服务等。而且我们还有很多想法，将会让Prime服务变得更好。

读者与作者

我们正在代表读者进行重大的投资活动。我们发布了全新的高清晰度、高对比度Kindle Paperwhite服务，并赢得了热烈的好评。我们将令人印象深刻的Goodread功能与Kindle进行了整合，并为Kindle引入了FreeTime功能；同时，我们还在印度、墨西哥和澳大利亚等市场上推出了Kindle。另外，美国联邦航空局（FAA）已经批准乘客可在飞机起飞和降落时使用电子设备，这意味着乘客将可享受到更多乐趣。在许多盟友的帮助下，我们的公共政策团队为此耐心地工作了四年时间，曾携带150部活跃的Kindle平板电脑登上一架测试飞机，测试结果是一切正常。

除了CreateSpace、Kindle Singles和Kindle Direct Publishing以外，我们还推出了一系列新服务，如Kindle Worlds、文学杂志Day One、8种新的亚马逊出版（Amazon Publishing）压印，此外还在英国和德国市场上推出了亚马逊出版服务。成千上万的作者已经在使用这些服务，开拓能实现其个人抱负的写书生涯。许多作者都写信告诉我们说，在我们的帮助下，他们有能力送自己的孩子去上大学、支付医疗费用或是买房。我们是阅读的传教士，而这些故事将激励和鼓舞我们继续代表读者和作者作出更多的发明创造。

Prime Instant Video服务

按新客户人数、重复使用次数以及视频流播放总次数等各种指标衡量，Prime Instant Video（以下简称“PIV”）服务都取得了巨大的增长。这些都是输出指标，表明我们正走在一条前景很好的道路上。其中两项关键指标是视频总量的增长以及视频的吸引力。自从我们在2011年推出PIV服务以来，其视频总量已经从5000个增加至4万多个，Prime会员可收看所有这些视频。

PIV拥有许多独家内容，如《当顿庄园》（Downton Abbey）、《穹顶之下》（Under the Dome）、《美国谍梦》（The Americans）、《火线警探》（Justified）、《格林》（Grimm）、《黑色孤儿》（Orphan Black）和《诉讼双雄》（Suits）等，以及《海绵宝宝》（SpongeBob SquarePants）、《爱探险的朵拉》（Dora the Explorer）和《蓝色斑点狗》（Blue’s Clues）等。

此外，亚马逊工作室（Amazon Studios）团队也仍在大力投资于原创内容。加里·特鲁多（Gary Trudeau）的《阿尔法屋》（Alpha House）已在去年开始上映，这部由约翰·古德曼（John Goodman）出演的剧集很快就成为亚马逊网站上收看次数最多的剧集。

我们还在最近推出了六部原创剧集，如迈克尔·康纳利（Michael Connelly）出演的《Bosch》、出自《X档案》导演克里斯·卡特（Chris Carter）之手的《The After》、罗曼·科波拉（Roman Coppola）和贾森·舒瓦茨曼（Jason Schwartzman）执导的《Mozart in the Jungle》、以及吉尔·索洛韦（Jill Soloway）执导的《Transparent》等。

我们对自己发展PIV服务的方法感到满意，并在最近于英国和德国市场上推出这项服务时采用了同样的方法。在这些国家中，客户的早期回应十分良好，超出我们此前的预期。

流媒体机顶盒Fire TV

在经过两年的辛勤工作后，我们的硬件团队刚刚在上周发布了Fire TV流媒体机顶盒。Fire TV不仅是观看亚马逊视频内容的最佳方式，同时还支持一些并非来自于亚马逊的服务，如Netflix、Hulu Plus、VEVO和WatchESPN等。

Fire TV拥有较大的硬件规格，而该类别的产品此前一直都是轻硬件的设备。Fire TV速度很快，而且使用灵活。我们的ASAP技术能预测用户想要收看什么样的内容，并可提前对其进行缓冲，因此这些内容可瞬时开始播放。我们的团队还在遥控器中放置了一个微型麦克风；用户只需点击遥控器上的麦克风按键，说出自己想要搜索的内容即可，无需在字母键盘上敲击。该团队做得很好，因为语音搜索功能确实能够使用。

除了可提供PIV的内容以外，Fire TV还能让用户以菜单点选的方式来收看20多万部电影和电视剧，包括新上线的《Gravity》、《为奴十二载》（12 Years a Slave）、《达拉斯买家俱乐部》（Dallas Buyers Club）和《Frozen》等。另外，Fire TV还允许用户在电视上玩质量很高且价格低廉的游戏。我们希望你们能试用这种设备，并告诉我们感觉如何。我们的团队很希望能收到你们的反馈信息。

亚马逊游戏工作室（Amazon Game Studios）

22世纪初，地球受到了来自于外星物种Ne’ahtu的威胁。外星人利用电脑病毒感染了地球的电网，导致整个星球的防御系统失效。但在外星人发起进攻以前，电脑科学奇才艾米·拉马努詹（Amy Ramanujan）清除了病毒，拯救了整个地球。而在今天，Ne’ahtu卷土从来，拉马努詹博士必须阻止他们对地球发动全面入侵。她需要你的帮助。

这是亚马逊游戏工作室为Fire TV开发的第一款独家游戏《Sev Zero》的背景。开发团队结合了塔防类和射击类游戏的元素，创造出一种新的合作模式。在这种模式中，一名玩家需操纵游戏手柄展开地面战斗，另一名玩家则通过平板电脑提供空中支援。我可以保证，在一些紧张时刻下，你一定会对时机恰到好处的空中打击心存感激。当你看到这款游戏时，可能会由于一款低价流媒体设备能提供如此高水平的游戏体验而感到惊讶。

我们正在从头开始为Fire平板电脑和Fire TV开发一系列画质精美的创新游戏，而《Sev Zero》只是其中最早的一款。

亚马逊应用商店（Amazon Appstore）

亚马逊应用商店目前已经在为将近200个国家中的用户提供服务，由全球顶级开发者制作的应用和游戏总数已经超过了20万个，与此前一年相比几乎增加了两倍。我们推出了虚拟货币Amazon Coins，能让用户在购买应用或是进行应用内购买活动时获得最高10%的折扣。我们还推出了Whispersync for Games技术，允许用户在一台设备上开始玩游戏，然后可在另一台设备上继续游戏，同时又不会丢失进度。

开发者则可以利用Mobile Associates程序，在他们开发的应用内部提供来自于亚马逊的数百万种实体产品，并在用户购买这些产品时赚到介绍费。我们还推出了Appstore Developer Select营销计划，在Kindle Fire和亚马逊移动广告网络（Mobile Ad Network）上推广新的应用和游戏。

我们开创了Analytics和A/B Testing服务，这些免费服务能让开发者追踪用户参与度，并为iOS、Android和Fire OS等平台优化其应用。此外，我们还在这一年中开始支持HTML5应用开发者，他们现在也可在Kindle Fire上提供自己开发的应用，并通过亚马逊应用商店出售。

有声读物

对于全球最大的有声读物生产商和销售商Audible来说，2013年是里程碑式的一年。Audible让用户一边阅读一边看其他东西成为可能，到目前为止已经有数百万名用户通过Audible下载了有声读物及其他有声程序，总下载量达到了数亿次。在2013年中，Audible用户下载的有声读物的总收听时长达到了近6亿个小时。

在Audible Studios的帮助下，人们正在收听凯特·温丝莱特（Kate Winslet）、科林·弗思（Colin Firth）、安妮·海瑟薇（Anne Hathaway）及其他许多艺术明星的作品。2013年中的一部热门作品是杰克·吉伦哈尔（Anne Hathaway）的《伟大的盖茨比》（The Great Gatsby），这本书已经售出了10万本。

Whispersync for Voice服务允许用户享受无缝的切换设备阅读体验，使其能在Kindle上阅读一本书，随后在智能手机上收听同一本书的有声版。《华尔街日报》称，Whispersync for Voice是“亚马逊最新的图书‘杀手级应用’”。如果你还没有使用这种服务，那么我建议你不妨试试看，这是一项很有趣的服务，可扩充你能用来阅读的时间。

生鲜百货

在西雅图试运营五年以后（没人会指责我们缺少耐心），我们将亚马逊生鲜电商服务Amazon Fresh拓展到了洛杉矶和旧金山。Amazon Fresh会员只需支付2,999美元的年费，即可获得同日送货服务。在每天清晨，他们不仅可以收到生鲜食品，同时还能收到其他50多万种货品，从玩具到电子产品到家居用品无所不包。

我们还在与备受欢迎的本地商家（例如贝弗利山庄奶酪店、“帕克鱼摊”（Pike Place Fish Market）、旧金山红酒贸易公司（San Francisco Wine Trading Company）等）合作，针对种类繁多的预制食品和特制食品提供同样方便的送货上门服务。我们将继续这种方法——评估和改进Amazon Fresh服务——目标是将这项令人感到不可思议的服务推向更多城市。

亚马逊网络服务（Amazon Web Services）

亚马逊网络服务诞生至今已有8年，其开发团队的创新速度一直都在加快。在2010年中，我们推出了61种重大的新服务和功能；2011年中新推出了82种，2012年为159种，2013年为280种。与此同时，我们还在扩大地理上的足迹。现在，亚马逊网络服务已经在全球范围内拥有10大覆盖地域，包括美国东海岸、美国西海岸的两个地区、欧洲、新加坡、东京、悉尼、巴西、中国以及政府云服务平台GovCloud。

在这些地区中，我们的内容分发网络拥有26个服务区以及51个边缘位置。开发团队直接与客户客户，有能力基于他们了解到的东西进行设计、开发和发布。我们一直都在不断推出新的迭代；当准备好一种新功能或是增强一种功能时，我们就会立即面向所有用户推出。这种方法迅捷、以客户为中心且十分有效，允许我们在过去8年时间里40多次降价。而且，开发团队并不准备放慢创新的速度。

员工激励与放权

我们正在挑战自我，不仅致力于发明创造作为公司门面的功能，同时也希望找到更好的方式来处理公司内部事务，这将提高公司的经营效率，同时令我们的全球员工都从中受益。

我们推出了一项名为“职业选择”（Career Choice）的计划，其内容是为公司员工预付95%的学费，让他们能就读自己所需领域中的相关课程，如飞机机械学或护理学等，无论这些技能是否与其在亚马逊的事业有关。这项计划的目标是给员工以更多选择。我们知道，对于履约中心的某些员工来说，亚马逊就是他们的事业；而对于其他一些员工来说，亚马逊可能只是一个“踏板”，将来他们会到其他公司求职，而到时他们可能需要具备新的技能。如果正确的培训能让他们未来的求职结果变得不同，那么我们愿意伸出援手。

第二项计划则是“离职付薪”（Pay to Quit），这种计划是由Zappos发明的，而亚马逊履约中心对其进行了发展。“离职付薪”计划的内容十分简单：我们会每年一次向员工提供离职时拿到现金的机会。供职满一年后离职将可拿到2000美元；供职时间每多一年，离职时就可多拿1000美元，最高不超过5000美元。

这项计划的主旨其实是“请不要接受这一提议”。我们希望员工不要接受“离职付薪”计划，希望他们都能留下来。那么，为什么我们要推出这项计划呢？其目标是鼓励人们抓住机会，慎重考虑自己想要的到底是什么。从长期来看，如果一名员工总是呆在他不想呆的公司里，那么无论对这名员工还是对公司来说都是不健康的事情。

第三项内部创新计划则是“虚拟联络中心”（Virtual Contact Center）。我们在几年前就已经开始有这个想法，随后的时间里该计划一直都在发展，其结果相当良好。根据这项计划，员工可在家里为亚马逊和Kindle客户提供客服支持。对于许多员工来说，这种灵活性都是十分理想的，因为他们可能有年幼的子女需要照顾，或是由于有其他什么理由而无法或是更希望不在公司上班。“虚拟联络中心”是我们在美国市场上增长速度最快的“工作场所”，到现在为止已经覆盖了10多个州。这种增长趋势还将继续下去，我们希望在2014年中将其覆盖的州扩大一倍。

聘用退役老兵

我们正在寻找这样的领导者：他们拥有发明创造的能力，能从大处着眼，行重于言，而且能基于服务客户的想法来开展工作。这些原则看起来类似于军人的品质，而我们发现，在迅速发展的工作环境中，军人的领导经验是十分宝贵的。我们是Joining Forces和100,000 Jobs Mission运动的成员，这两项全国性的运动旨在鼓励企业为退役军人及其家人提供职业机会和支持。

去年，我们的“军事人才”（Military Talent）团队参加了50多次招聘会，旨在帮助退役老兵在亚马逊找到就业机会。在2013年中，我们聘用了1900多名退役老兵。一旦退役老兵加入我们的团队，我们会向其提供多项计划，帮助他们更容易地完成从军人到平民劳动力的过渡，并将他们与公司内部的退役老兵网络联系起来，以便向其提供指导和支持。这些计划已经让我们被《特种部队工作杂志》（G.I. Jobs Magazine）、《美国老兵杂志》（U.S. Veterans Magazine）和《军人家属杂志》（Military Spouse Magazine）评为最大的退役军人雇主。随着公司的不断成长，我们还将继续在聘用退役老兵这一领域中进行投资。

履约中心服务创新

19年前，我每天晚上都会开着一辆雪佛兰Blazer汽车把亚马逊的包裹送到邮局。在那时，我的梦想是有一天能用叉式装卸车送货。时光流逝，到今天我们已经拥有了96个履约中心，并正在设计第七代履约中心。我们的运营团队十分出色，他们很有办法，而且极具独创性。通过得名于日语单词“改善”的Kaizen计划，我们的员工正在以小团队的形式展开工作，以便让业务流程变得更加通畅，并减少缺陷和浪费。我们的Earth Kaizen设定了降低能耗、回收及其他绿色目标。在2013年中，有4700多名员工参与了1100个Kaizen计划。

对于我们的履约中心来说，复杂的软件是其关键所在。今年，我们在整个履约中心网络中作出了280项重大的软件改进，而我们的目标则是继续发展迭代，在设计、布局技术和运营等方面都取得改进，确保每个新的履约中心都比上一个更好。我愿意邀请你们来亲身参观一个履约中心，面向6岁及其以上的公民开放履约中心参观之旅。你们可以登陆www.amazon.com/fctours网页，获取更多信息。

当我自己来到公司旗下的履约中心时，总会感到惊奇，希望你们也能安排一次这样的旅程。我觉得，你们一定会感到印象深刻。

市内园区

2013年中，我们在西雅图新开辟了42万平方英尺（约合3.9万平方米）的新总部办公空间。此外，我们还已经在四个城市街区中破土动工，将在面积高达几百万平方英尺的市区中展开建筑工作。我们原本可以在郊区兴建办公大楼以节省资金，但对我们来说，留在城市里是很重要的，原因是我们的员工能够利用现有社区和公共交通系统，从而降低对汽车的依赖性。

我们正在投资建设专用的自行车道，为员工提供安全的、无污染的、方便的通勤路线。我们的许多员工都可以住在园区附近，大大节省通勤时间，走着就能上班。虽然我无法证明，但我还是相信，市区内的公司总部将有助于保持亚马逊的活力，吸引更多的人才，而且对于公司员工以及整个西雅图市的健康安乐来说都是非常好的。

快递服务

通过与美国邮政总局之间的合作，我们已经开始在选定城市中首次提供周日送货服务，这对亚马逊客户来说是个好消息。在2014年中，我们计划将这项服务推广至覆盖更多的美国人口。我们已经在英国开创了自己的“最后一英里”快递网络，以弥补商业运营商无法支持我们的高峰时间送货需求的缺陷。

在印度和中国市场上，送货服务的基础设施还不成熟，各大城市中都能看到以自行车为交通工具的亚马逊快递员，而未来我们将会推出更多的发明创造。Prime Air团队已经开始测试第五代和第六代飞行器，第七代和第八代则正处于设计阶段中。

不断实验

我们拥有自己的内部实验平台，并利用这个名为“Weblab”的平台来对自身网站和产品的改进展开评估。2013年中，我们在全球范围内总共运营着1976个Weblab实验平台，相比之下2012年为1092个，2011年为546个。我们最近取得的成功是一种名为“Ask an owner”的新功能。很多年以前，我们率先提出了在线客户评论的想法，也就是客户在网上分享对一种产品的看法，以便帮助其他客户作出深思熟虑的购买决定。

“Ask an owner”是这一传统的延续，能让客户通过产品页面来提出与产品有关的任何问题。比如说，这种产品是否能跟电视、音响或个人电脑兼容？电池巡航时间是多少？随后，我们会把这些问题反馈给产品厂商。正如在线评论一样，客户也都很乐于通过这项新功能来分享知识，从而为其他客户提供直接的帮助。 到目前为止，客户已经提出了成百上千万个问题，而我们也对这些问题进行了逐一解答。

服装和鞋类产品

Amazon Fashion正在繁荣发展中。优质品牌认识到，它们可以利用亚马逊找到那些关注时尚潮流的客户，而客户则可以享受免费退货、图片详情和视频剪辑等服务。我们在布鲁克林开设了占地4万平方英尺（约合3720平方米）的照片工作室，这个工作室现在平均每天拍摄的相片数量高达10413张。

为了庆祝这个工作室的成立，我们举办了一次设计大赛，邀请来自普拉特学院（Pratt）、帕森斯设计学院（Parsons）、纽约视觉艺术学院（School of Visual Arts）和纽约时装技术学院（Fashion Institute of Technology）的学生参赛，裁判则包括史蒂文·科尔布（Steven Kolb）、华裔设计师陈娟（Eva Chen）、华裔设计师林健诚（Derek Lam）、特蕾西·里斯（Tracy Reese）和史蒂文·艾伦（Steven Alan）等业界知名人士。最后，这场大赛的荣誉归于帕森斯设计学院，该学院捧回了大奖。

简约包装

我们反对使用任何铁丝系材和塑料壳包装，为此而展开的相关运动正风靡各地。我们从五年前开始提倡这个想法，那就是不应让人们在打开新的电子产品或玩具包装时冒上遭到身体伤害的风险；时至今日，这项计划已经扩大至将20多万种产品涵盖在内，这些产品都使用了易于开启的、可回收的包装设计，以便减轻人们由于包装难拆而产生的愤怒感，同时也减少了包装废料对地球环境的污染。

现在已有2000多家制造商参与了我们的简约包装（Frustration-Free Packaging）计划，包括费雪、美泰、联合利华、贝尔金、维氏瑞士军表、罗技及其他很多公司在内。我们已经向175个国家出口了大量简约包装产品，同时也令客户需要处理的废料大大减少——到目前为止，我们已经消除了3300万磅（约合1.5吨）的过量包装。

透过这个完美的范例，我们能看到一个传教士般的团队是如何专心致力于为客户提供服务的。通过他们坚持不懈的辛勤工作，从寥寥19种产品开始的一个想法到今天已普遍应用于数十万种产品，令成百上千万的客户从中受益。

亚马逊履约服务

2013年，使用“亚马逊履约”（Fulfillment by Amazon）服务的商家总数增长了65%以上，如此规模庞大的增长并不常见。从很多方面来说，“亚马逊履约”都是独一无二的。利用一项计划就能让两种类型的客户感到满意，这并非经常都能取得的效果。通过“亚马逊履约”服务，商家可以在我们的履约中心里存放其产品，然后由我们来处理挑选、包装、送货和客服流程。这样一来，商家就能得益于全世界最先进的履约网络，很轻松地扩大自身业务的覆盖范围，与成百万的客户取得联系。

加入“亚马逊履约”服务计划的产品可享受Prime服务的免费两天送货待遇，而客户也能从中受益，因为这意味着他们能从自己的Prime会员身份中获得更大价值。毫无疑问，通过加入“亚马逊履约”服务计划的方式，商家能提高自身的销售额。据2013年的一份调查报告显示，在已加入该计划的商家中，有将近四分之三称其在亚马逊网站上的销售量增长了20%以上。这是一项能取得“双赢”效果的计划。

“‘亚马逊履约’服务是我有过的‘员工’中最好的一个……有天早上我起床后就发现，‘亚马逊履约’已经帮我送出了50份货物。当我意识到即使是在睡觉的时候也能卖出产品，加入这项计划就是板上钉钉的事情了。”——体育用品公司Action Sports的桑尼·舒克（Thanny Schuc）说道。

“在品牌初创还籍籍无名的时候，想要找到愿意买入产品存货的零售商是件难事儿。但在亚马逊，这种障碍并不存在。亚马逊的魅力在于，如果有人说：‘我想开家公司’，那就可以到亚马逊网站上真的开一家公司。不需要办公楼租约，甚至都不需要先聘用好员工，完全可以做到自力更生。我就是那样做的。”——YogaRat公司的温德尔·莫里斯（Wendell Morris）说道。

亚马逊第三方登录和支付服务（Login and Pay）

在过去几年时间里，我们让亚马逊客户能在其他网站上进行支付活动，如Kickstarter、SmugMug和Gogo Inflight等，客户能通过已经存储在其亚马逊账号中的信用卡和送货地址来做到这一点。而在今年，我们扩大了这项能力，让用户可使用亚马逊账号身份登录其他网站，从而省去了必须记住其他账号名和秘密的工夫。无论对客户还是商家来说，这都是一项很方便的服务。

Cymax Stores以及利用亚马逊第三方登录和支付服务取得了巨大成功，这家在线家具零售商的订单已有20%通过这项服务进行处理，相当于Cymax Stores网站新账号注册数量的三倍。在今年第一季度，Cymax Stores通过这种方式将其购物转换率提高了3.15%。这样的例子并不少见，我们的许多合作伙伴都取得了类似的成绩，这让登录和支付服务的开发团队深受鼓舞。敬请期待我们在2014年中的表现。

Amazon Smile服务

我们在2013年中推出了Amazon Smile服务，这项服务提供了一种简单的方法，能让亚马逊客户在每次购物时都能支持他们最喜欢的慈善组织。当你在smile.amazon.com网站上购物时，亚马逊会将购买价的一部分捐赠给你选中的慈善组织。无论是商品数量、价格、可选配送服务还是Prime会员服务，这个网站都与亚马逊主网站毫无二致，客户甚至可在该网站上找到跟主网站一样的购物车和意向购物清单。

除了意料之中的全国性大型慈善组织以外，你还可以指定居住地的儿童医院、学校的家庭教师协会，或是其他任何慈善组织。smile.amazon.com网站提供了将近100万个慈善组织备选，希望你能在其中找到自己的最爱。

Mayday按钮

“不仅设备本身够好，Mayday功能也绝对是棒极了！Kindle团队真是打出了一记漂亮的全垒打啊。”
“刚刚测试了Mayday按钮的15秒响应时间……亚马逊又做到了，真令人感到印象深刻。”

在亚马逊，没什么事情能比“重塑标准”让我们感到更开心——创造出能让用户喜爱的发明，改变他们对正常标准的期许。Mayday重新构想并彻底改造了设备技术支持的理念。

你只需点击一下Mayday按钮，就会有一位亚马逊专家出现在你的Fire HDX上，指导你使用任何功能。你可以在专家的指导下自己熟悉那些不会用的功能，也可以直接让专家为你演示，哪种方式更好就用哪种。Mayday服务24小时全年无休，服务人员的响应时间不会超过15秒钟。实际上，我们超越了这一目标——即使是在最忙碌的圣诞节当天，平均响应时间也只有9秒钟。

有些Mayday相关信息是很有趣的。Mayday的技术咨询人员已经从公司客户那里接到了35次求婚，有475名客户要求与艾米（Amy）对话，她是Mayday的电视名人。109名客户曾要求Mayday工作人员帮助他们订购披萨；从这些订单来看，必胜客以微弱优势领先于达美乐。Mayday的技术咨询人员曾44次为客户唱生日歌，648次为客户唱小夜曲，还有3名客户曾要求Mayday技术咨询人员给他们讲睡前故事。这真是太酷了。

我希望，这能让你们感觉到我们拥有多么庞大的机会，而我们的创新计划又拥有多么庞大的潜力、创造精神及其对超高质量的追求。应该再次强调的是，这只是我们创新计划中的一小部分。在这封信中，我省略了很多同样有前途的、值得自傲的、有趣的项目。

我们拥有一个庞大的、极具发明能力的团队，同时还拥有一种耐心的、开拓性的、着迷于为客户服务的文化——大大小小的伟大创新每天都在发生，这些创新出现在公司内部的各个级别中，但总是以服务客户为目标。这种发明创造在整个公司内部的分散化分布状态——不仅限于公司高管层——是实现健康而又高产的创新目标的唯一方式。我们正在做的事情就是不断挑战，并乐在其中。

失败是创新必不可少的一部分，我们理解这一点，并相信在经过早期的失败以后，不断的重复尝试会让我们最终取得成功。这意味着，我们遭遇的失败从规模上来说是相对较小的（大多数实验都能从小规模开始）；当我们找到真正有益于客户的东西时，就会加倍努力地去做，希望有一天能将其变成更大的成功。不过，创新的过程并非总是那样清晰。发明创造是件麻烦的事情；随着时间的推移，我们肯定也会在某些重大的押注上遭遇失败。

我想以对乔伊·科维（Joy Covey）的缅怀来结束这封股东信，她曾在亚马逊初创期间担任首席财务官，给这家公司留下了一个不可磨灭的印记。乔伊才华横溢，热情奔放而又不乏幽默。她很喜欢笑，总是睁大着眼睛，不会遗漏任何东西。她对光学很有研究，永远都在思考。她性格稳重，勇气十足，对亚马逊高管团队中的每个人乃至亚马逊的整体文化都带来了深远的影响。她的遗愿一直都在我们左右，确保我们会去关注细节，审视我们周围的世界，发现一切都是那么有趣。

对于能成员亚马逊团队的一份子，我深感荣幸。跟以前一样，我循例附上最早的1997年股东信。我们的道路从未改变，每一天都是第一天。

杰夫·贝索斯
亚马逊创始人、首席执行官
2014.4

2014贝索斯致Amazon股东信英文原文

To our shareowners:

I’m so proud of what all the teams here at Amazon have accomplished on behalf of customers this past year. Amazonians around the world are polishing products and services to a degree that is beyond what’s expected or required, taking the long view, reinventing normal, and getting customers to say “Wow.”

I’d like to take you on a tour that samples a small subset of our various initiatives, ranging from Prime to Amazon Smile to Mayday. The goal is to give you a sense for how much is going on across Amazon and how exciting it is to work on these programs. This broad array of initiatives is only possible because a large team of talented people at every level are exercising their good judgment every day and always asking, how do we make this better?

Ok, let’s get started on the tour.

Prime

Customers love Prime. More than one million customers joined Prime in the third week of December alone, and there are now tens of millions of Prime members worldwide. On a per customer basis, Prime members are ordering more items, across more categories, than ever before. Even internally, it’s easy for us to forget that Prime was a new, unproven (some even said foolhardy) concept when we launched it nine years ago: all-you-can-eat, two-day shipping for a flat annual fee. At that time, we had one million eligible Prime products. This year, we passed 20 million eligible products, and we continue to add more. We’ve made Prime better in other ways too, adding new digital benefits – including the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and Prime Instant Video. And we’re not done. We have many ideas for how to make Prime even better.

Readers & Authors

We’re investing heavily on behalf of readers. The all-new, high-resolution, high-contrast Kindle Paperwhite launched to rave reviews. We integrated the very impressive Goodreads into Kindle, introduced FreeTime for Kindle, and launched Kindle in India, Mexico, and Australia. Bringing joy to air travelers, the FAA approved the use of electronic devices during takeoff and landing. Our public policy team, with the help of many allies, worked patiently for four years on this, at one point loading a test plane with 150 active Kindles. Yes, it all worked fine!

Joining CreateSpace, Kindle Singles, and Kindle Direct Publishing, is the new service Kindle Worlds, the literary journal Day One, eight new Amazon Publishing imprints, and the launch of Amazon Publishing in the UK and Germany. Thousands of authors are already using these services to build fulfilling writing careers. Many write and tell us how we have helped them send their children to college, pay off medical bills, or purchase a home. We are missionaries for reading and these stories inspire and encourage us to keep inventing on behalf of writers and readers.

Prime Instant Video

Prime Instant Video is experiencing tremendous growth across all metrics – including new customers, repeat usage, and total number of streams. These are output metrics and they suggest we are on a good path, focusing on the right inputs. Two of the key inputs are the growth of selection and the desirability of that selection. Since we launched PIV in 2011 with 5,000 titles, we’ve grown selection to more than 40,000 movies and TV episodes – all included in your Prime membership. PIV has exclusives on hundreds of sought after TV seasons including Downton Abbey, the ratings blockbuster Under the Dome, The Americans, Justified, Grimm, Orphan Black, Suits, and kids programs such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer, and Blue’s Clues. In addition, our Amazon Studios team continues to invest heavily in original content. Gary Trudeau’s Alpha House, starring John Goodman, debuted last year and quickly became the most-watched show on Amazon. We recently greenlit six more originals, including Bosch, by Michael Connelly, The After, from Chris Carter of The X-Files, Mozart in the Jungle, from Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, and Jill Soloway’s beautiful Transparent, which some have called the best pilot in years. We like our approach and are replicating it with our recent rollout of PIV in both the UK and Germany. The early customer response in those countries has been terrific, surpassing our expectations.

Fire TV

Just this past week, after two years of hard work, our hardware team launched Fire TV. Not only is Fire TV the best way to watch Amazon’s video offerings, it also embraces non-Amazon content services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, VEVO, WatchESPN, and many more. Fire TV has big hardware specs in a category that’s previously been hardware-light. It shows. Fire TV is fast and fluid. And our ASAP technology predicts what you might want to watch and pre-buffers it, so shows start instantly. Our team also put a small microphone in the remote control. Hold down the mic button on the remote, and you can speak your search term rather than type it into an alphabet grid. The team has done a terrific job – the voice search actually works.

In addition to Prime Instant Video, Fire TV gives you instant access to over 200,000 movies and TV episodes available a la carte, including new releases like Gravity, 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyers Club, Frozen, and more. As a bonus, Fire TV also lets you play high-quality, inexpensive games on your living room TV. We hope you try it out. If you do, let us know what you think. The team would love to hear your feedback.

Amazon Game Studios

It’s early in the twenty-second century and Earth is threatened by an alien species, the Ne’ahtu. The aliens infected Earth’s energy grid with a computer virus to disable the planet’s defenses. Before they could strike, computer science prodigy Amy Ramanujan neutralized the alien virus and saved the planet. Now, the Ne’ahtu are back and Dr. Ramanujan must prevent them from launching an all-out invasion on Earth. She needs your help.

That’s how Sev Zero, the first Fire TV exclusive from Amazon Game Studios, begins. The team combined tower defense with shooter gameplay and created a co-op mode where one player leads on the ground with their gamepad controller while a second player provides air support from a tablet. I can assure you that there are some intense moments when you’ll appreciate a well-timed air-strike. When you see it, you may be surprised that this level of game play is possible on an inexpensive streaming media device. Sev Zero is only the first of a collection of innovative and graphically beautiful games we’re building from the ground up for Fire tablets and Fire TV.

Amazon Appstore

The Amazon Appstore now serves customers in almost 200 countries. Selection has grown to include over 200,000 apps and games from top developers around the globe – nearly tripling in size over the past year. We introduced Amazon Coins, a virtual currency that saves customers up to 10% on app and in-app purchases. Our Whispersync for Games technology lets you start a game on one device and continue it on another without losing your progress. Developers can use the Mobile Associates program to offer millions of physical products from Amazon inside their apps, and earn referral fees when customers buy those items. We introduced Appstore Developer Select, a marketing program that promotes new apps and games on Kindle Fire tablets and on Amazon’s Mobile Ad Network. We created Analytics and A/B Testing services – free services that empower developers to track user engagement and optimize their apps for iOS, Android, and Fire OS. Also this year, we embraced HTML5 web app developers. They too can now offer their apps on Kindle Fire and through the Amazon Appstore.

Spoken Word Audio

2013 was a landmark year for Audible, the world’s largest seller and producer of audiobooks. Audible makes it possible for you to read when your eyes are busy. Millions of customers download hundreds of millions of audiobooks and other spoken-word programming from Audible. Audible customers downloaded close to 600 million listening hours in 2013. Thanks to Audible Studios, people drive to work listening to Kate Winslet, Colin Firth, Anne Hathaway, and many other stars. One big hit in 2013 was Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance of The Great Gatsby, which has already sold 100,000 copies. Whispersync for Voice allows customers to switch seamlessly back and forth between reading a book on their Kindle and listening to the corresponding Audible book on their smart phone. The Wall Street Journal called Whispersync for Voice “Amazon’s new killer app for books.” If you haven’t already, I recommend you give it a try – it’s fun and expands the amount of time you have available to read.

Fresh Grocery

After trialing the service for five years in Seattle (no one accuses us of a lack of patience), we expanded Amazon Fresh to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Prime Fresh members pay $299 a year and receive same-day and early morning delivery not only on fresh grocery items but also on over 500,000 other items ranging from toys to electronics to household goods. We’re also partnering with favorite local merchants (the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, Pike Place Fish Market, San Francisco Wine Trading Company, and many more) to provide the same convenient home delivery on a great selection of prepared foods and specialty items. We’ll continue our methodical approach – measuring and refining Amazon Fresh – with the goal of bringing this incredible service to more cities over time.

Amazon Web Services

AWS is eight years old, and the team’s pace of innovation is actually accelerating. In 2010, we launched 61 significant services and features. In 2011, that number was 82. In 2012, it was 159. In 2013: 280. We’re also expanding our geographic footprint. We now have 10 AWS regions around the world, including the East Coast of the U.S., two on the West Coast, Europe, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Brazil, China, and a government-only region called GovCloud. We have 26 availability zones across regions and 51 edge locations for our content distribution network. The development teams work directly with customers and are empowered to design, build, and launch based on what they learn. We iterate continuously, and when a feature or enhancement is ready, we push it out and make it instantly available to all. This approach is fast, customer-centric, and efficient – it’s allowed us to reduce prices more than 40 times in the past 8 years – and the teams have no plans to slow down.

Employee Empowerment

We challenge ourselves to not only invent outward facing features, but also to find better ways to do things internally – things that will both make us more effective and benefit our thousands of employees around the world.

Career Choice is a program where we pre-pay 95% of tuition for our employees to take courses for in-demand fields, such as airplane mechanic or nursing, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. The goal is to enable choice. We know that for some of our fulfillment center employees, Amazon will be a career. For others, Amazon might be a stepping stone on the way to a job somewhere else – a job that may require new skills. If the right training can make the difference, we want to help.

The second program is called Pay to Quit. It was invented by the clever people at Zappos, and the Amazon fulfillment centers have been iterating on it. Pay to Quit is pretty simple. Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit. The first year the offer is made, it’s for $2,000. Then it goes up one thousand dollars a year until it reaches $5,000. The headline on the offer is “Please Don’t Take This Offer.” We hope they don’t take the offer; we want them to stay. Why do we make this offer? The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want. In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.

A third inward innovation is our Virtual Contact Center. It’s an idea we started a few years back and have continued to grow with terrific results. Under this program, employees provide customer service support for Amazon and Kindle customers while working from home. This flexibility is ideal for many employees who, perhaps because they have young children or for another reason, either cannot or prefer not to work outside the home. Our Virtual Contact Center is our fastest growing “site” in the U.S., operating in more than ten states today. This growth will continue as we hope to double our state footprint in 2014.

Veteran Hiring

We seek leaders who can invent, think big, have a bias for action, and deliver results on behalf of customers. These principles look familiar to men and women who’ve served our country in the armed forces, and we find that their experience leading people is invaluable in our fast-paced work environment. We’re a member of Joining Forces and the 100,000 Jobs Mission – two national efforts that encourage businesses to offer service members and their families career opportunities and support. Our Military Talent team attended more than 50 recruiting events last year to help veterans find job opportunities at Amazon. In 2013, we hired more than 1,900 veterans. And once veterans join our team, we offer several programs that help them transition more easily into the civilian workforce and that connect them with our internal network of veterans for mentoring and support. These programs have earned us recognition as a top employer by G.I. Jobs Magazine, U.S. Veterans Magazine, and Military Spouse Magazine, and we’ll continue to invest in military veteran hiring as we grow.

Fulfillment Innovation

Nineteen years ago, I drove the Amazon packages to the post office every evening in the back of my Chevy Blazer. My vision extended so far that I dreamed we might one day get a forklift. Fast-forward to today and we have 96 fulfillment centers and are on our 7th generation of fulfillment center design. Our operations team is extraordinary – methodical and ingenious. Through our Kaizen program, named for the Japanese term “change for the better,” employees work in small teams to streamline processes and reduce defects and waste. Our Earth Kaizens set energy reduction, recycling, and other green goals. In 2013, more than 4,700 associates participated in 1,100 Kaizens.

Sophisticated software is key in our FCs. This year, we rolled out 280 major software improvements across the FC network. Our goal is to continue to iterate and improve on the design, layout, technology, and operations in these buildings, ensuring that each new facility we build is better than the last. I invite you to come see one for yourself. We offer fulfillment center tours open to the public, ages six and above. You can find info on the available tours at www.amazon.com/fctours. I’m always amazed when I visit one of our FCs, and I hope you’ll arrange a tour. I think you’ll be impressed.

Urban Campus

In 2013, we added 420,000 square feet of new headquarters space in Seattle and broke ground on what will become four city blocks and several million square feet of new construction. It is a fact that we could have saved money by instead building in the suburbs, but for us, it was important to stay in the city. Urban campuses are much greener. Our employees are able to take advantage of existing communities and public transit infrastructure, with less dependence on cars. We’re investing in dedicated bike lanes to provide safe, pollution-free, easy access to our offices. Many of our employees can live nearby, skip the commute altogether, and walk to work. Though I can’t prove it, I also believe an urban headquarters will help keep Amazon vibrant, attract the right talent, and be great for the health and wellbeing of our employees and the city of Seattle.

Fast Delivery

In partnership with the United States Postal Service, we’ve begun for the first time to offer Sunday delivery to select cities. Sunday delivery is a win for Amazon customers, and we plan to roll it out to a large portion of the U.S. population throughout 2014. We’ve created our own fast, last-mile delivery networks in the UK where commercial carriers couldn’t support our peak volumes. In India and China, where delivery infrastructure isn’t yet mature, you can see Amazon bike couriers delivering packages throughout the major cities. And there is more invention to come. The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles, and we are in the design phase on generations 7 and 8.

Experiments and More Experiments

We have our own internal experimentation platform called “Weblab” that we use to evaluate improvements to our websites and products. In 2013, we ran 1,976 Weblabs worldwide, up from 1,092 in 2012, and 546 in 2011. One recent success is our new feature called “Ask an owner”. It was many years ago that we pioneered the idea of online customer reviews – customers sharing their opinion on a product to help other customers make an informed purchase decision. “Ask” is in that same tradition. From a product page, customers can ask any question related to the product. Is the product compatible with my TV/Stereo/PC? Is it easy to assemble? How long does the battery last? We then route these questions to owners of the product. As is the case with reviews, customers are happy to share their knowledge to directly help other customers. Millions of questions have already been asked and answered.

Apparel and Shoes

Amazon Fashion is booming. Premium brands are recognizing that they can use Amazon to reach fashion-conscious, high-demo customers, and customers are enjoying the selection, free returns, detailed photos, and video clips that let them see how clothes move and drape as the models walk and turn. We opened a new 40,000 square foot photo studio in Brooklyn and now shoot an average of 10,413 photos every day in the studio’s 28 bays. To celebrate the opening, we hosted a design contest with students from Pratt, Parsons, School of Visual Arts, and the Fashion Institute of Technology that was judged by a panel of industry leaders including Steven Kolb, Eva Chen, Derek Lam, Tracy Reese, and Steven Alan. Kudos to Parsons who took home the top prize.

Frustration-Free Packaging

Our battle against annoying wire ties and plastic clamshells rages on. An initiative that began five years ago with a simple idea that you shouldn’t have to risk bodily injury opening your new electronics or toys, has now grown to over 200,000 products, all available in easy-to-open, recyclable packaging designed to alleviate “wrap rage” and help the planet by reducing packaging waste. We have over 2,000 manufacturers in our Frustration-Free Packaging program, including Fisher-Price, Mattel, Unilever, Belkin, Victorinox Swiss Army, Logitech, and many more. We’ve now shipped many millions of Frustration-Free items to 175 countries. We are also reducing waste for customers – eliminating 33 million pounds of excess packaging to date. This program is a perfect example of a missionary team staying heads-down focused on serving customers. Through hard work and perseverance, an idea that started with only 19 products is now available on hundreds of thousands and benefiting millions of customers.

Fulfillment by Amazon

The number of sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon grew more than 65% last year. Growth like that at such large scale is unusual. FBA is unique in many ways. It’s not often you get to delight two customer sets with one program. With FBA, sellers can store their products in our fulfillment centers, and we pick, pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Sellers benefit from one of the most advanced fulfillment networks in the world, easily scaling their businesses to reach millions of customers. And not just any customers – Prime members. FBA products can be eligible for Prime free two-day shipping. Customers benefit from this additional selection – they get even more value out of their Prime membership. And, unsurprisingly, sellers see increased sales when they join FBA. In a 2013 survey, nearly three out of four FBA respondents reported that their unit sales increased on Amazon.com more than 20% after joining FBA. It’s a win-win.

“FBA is the best employee I have ever had. … One morning I woke up and realized FBA had shipped 50 units. As soon as I realized I could sell products while I sleep, it was a no-brainer.” – Thanny Schuck, Action Sports LLC

“Starting out as an unknown brand, it was difficult to find retailers willing to stock our goods. No such barriers existed at Amazon. The beauty of Amazon is that someone can say, ‘I want to start a business,’ and they can go on Amazon and really start a business. You don’t have to get a lease on a building or even have any employees at first. You can just do it on your own. And that’s what I did.” – Wendell Morris, YogaRat

Login and Pay with Amazon

For several years we’ve enabled Amazon customers to pay on other sites, such as Kickstarter, SmugMug, and Gogo Inflight, using the credit cards and shipping addresses already stored in their Amazon account. This year, we expanded that capability so customers can also sign in using their Amazon account credentials, saving them the annoyance of needing to remember yet another account name and password. It’s convenient for the customer and a business builder for the merchant. Cymax Stores, the online furniture retailer, has seen tremendous success with Login and Pay. It now accounts for 20% of their orders, tripling their new account registrations, and increasing purchase conversion 3.15% in the first three months. This example isn’t unusual. We are seeing results like these with many partners, and the team is excited and encouraged. You should look for more in 2014.

Amazon Smile

In 2013 we launched Amazon Smile – a simple way for customers to support their favorite charitable organizations every time they shop. When you shop at smile.amazon.com, Amazon donates a portion of the purchase price to the charity of your choice. You’ll find the same selection, prices, shipping options, and Prime eligibility on smile.amazon.com as you do on Amazon.com – you’ll even find your same shopping cart and wish lists. In addition to the large, national charities you would expect, you can also designate your local children’s hospital, your school’s PTA, or practically any other cause you might like. There are almost a million charities to choose from. I hope you’ll find your favorite on the list.

The Mayday Button

“Not only is the device awesome but the Mayday feature is absolutely FANTASTIC!!!!! The Kindle team has hit it out of the park with this one.”

“Just tried the mayday button on my hdx. 15 second response time…amazon has done it again. Thoroughly impressed.”

Nothing gives us more pleasure at Amazon than “reinventing normal” – creating inventions that customers love and resetting their expectations for what normal should be. Mayday reimagines and revolutionizes the idea of on-device tech support. Tap the Mayday button, and an Amazon expert will appear on your Fire HDX and can co-pilot you through any feature by drawing on your screen, walking you through how to do something yourself, or doing it for you – whatever works best. Mayday is available 24×7, 365 days a year, and our response time goal is 15 seconds or less. We beat that goal – with an average response time of only 9 seconds on our busiest day, Christmas.

A few of the Maydays have been amusing. Mayday Tech Advisors have received 35 marriage proposals from customers. 475 customers have asked to talk to Amy, our Mayday television personality. 109 Maydays have been customers asking for assistance with ordering a pizza. By a slim margin, Pizza Hut wins customer preference over Domino’s. There are 44 instances where the Mayday Tech Advisor has sung Happy Birthday to the customer. Mayday Tech Advisors have been serenaded by customers 648 times. And 3 customers have asked for a bedtime story. Pretty cool.

I hope that gives you some sense of the scope of our opportunity and initiatives, as well the inventive spirit and push for exceptional quality with which they’re undertaken. I should underscore again that this is a subset. There are many programs I’ve omitted in this letter that are just as promising, consequential, and interesting as those I’ve highlighted.

We have the good fortune of a large, inventive team and a patient, pioneering, customer-obsessed culture – great innovations, large and small, are happening everyday on behalf of customers, and at all levels throughout the company. This decentralized distribution of invention throughout the company – not limited to the company’s senior leaders – is the only way to get robust, high-throughput innovation. What we’re doing is challenging and fun – we get to work in the future.

Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional. We understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right. When this process works, it means our failures are relatively small in size (most experiments can start small), and when we hit on something that is really working for customers, we double-down on it with hopes to turn it into an even bigger success. However, it’s not always as clean as that. Inventing is messy, and over time, it’s certain that we’ll fail at some big bets too.

I’d like to close by remembering Joy Covey. Joy was Amazon’s CFO in the early days, and she left an indelible mark on the company. Joy was brilliant, intense, and so fun. She smiled a lot and her eyes were always wide, missing nothing. She was substance over optics. She was a long-term thinker. She had a deep keel. Joy was bold. She had a profound impact on all of us on the senior team and on the company’s entire culture. Part of her will always be here, making sure we watch the details, see the world around us, and all have fun.

I feel super lucky to be a part of the Amazon team. As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1.

Jeffrey P. Bezos
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Amazon.com, Inc.
April 2014

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