I've known Bezos for decades, since the very early days of Amazon, so it's no surprise to me that he's smart or willing to make big bets.

In the tech world, you can reel off great products in several ways. You can have the once-in-a-lifetime gut instincts of a Steve Jobs. You can have the brainiac coding skills of a Bill Gates, Larry Page, or Sergey Brin. Or, I learned, you can have the deep intellectual curiosity and stubbornness of a Jeff Bezos.

Amazon makes mistakes, including launching a smartphone in 2014 that was a flop and to which I gave a poor review.

Walt Mossberg Quotes