Hey, remember that time Jeff Bezos snuck in to your place and stole from your bookshelf that one time, before silently slipping away into the night? The Amazon.com CEO feels awful.

Bezos has apologized for remotely and silently deleting copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from customers' Kindles last week. He did so via a quick internet text message, since apparently this incident was too shameful for the CEO to bust out with another YouTube vid:

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.

What can he say, he was preoccupied with shoe shopping and let his company go a little nuts. Happens to the most maniacal of us.

[via TechCrunch]