Notable bombs like Pets.com and Kozmo.com at the height of the Internet bubble scared Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos out of the acquisition business. But he now appears to be cautiously filling up his cart again. So far this year, he's done three publicly announced acquisitions of or investments in startups — more than he did, as far as we can tell, in the Internet-depression years of 2002 through 2004. And that's just through Amazon.com — we're not counting any of the deals he's made on his own through Bezos Expeditions, his personal investment vehicle.



Data

8/6/2007 - Amie Street (demand-based pricing music download service)

2/25/2007 - Shelfari (book-centric social networking)

2/16/2007 - Atomic Moguls (fantasy sports)

12/5/2006 - Wikia (search)

10/2006 - TextPayMe (wireless payment system)

2/27/2006 - Shopbop.com (women's apparel retailer)

6/1/2005 - CustomFlix (download and burn DVDs)

4/10/2005 - Del.icio.us (social bookmarking, later sold to Yahoo)

4/4/2005 - BookSurge LLC (on-demand book-printing)

4/1/2005 - Mobipocket.com (eBooks for mobile devices)

2/9/2005 - 43 Things/Robot Coop ("goal" blogging/social network)

8/19/2004 - Joyo.com Limited (Chinese web retailer)

12/1/2001- Egghead.com (electronics retailer)

12/1/2001 - OurHouse.com (online hardware retailer)

11/9/2001 - Catalog City (catalog merchants)

2/1/2001 - Living.com (online retailer)

4/18/2000 - WineShopper.com (win retailer)

3/28/2000 - eZiba (handicraft retailer)

2/18/2000 - Basis (internationalization technology for web sites)

2/3/2000 - Greg Manning Auctions, Inc. (collectibles)

1/31/2000 - Audible (audio books)

1/24/2000 - Drugstore.com (online drugstore)

1/21/2000 - Greenlight (online car retailer)

1/11/2000 - Kozmo.com (grocery delivery service)

12/1/1999 - Ashford (luxury web retailer)

11/4/1999 - Convergence Corporation (mobile connectivity)

11/1/1999 - Tool Crib of the North (online and catalog tool and home improvement retailer)

11/1/1999 - Della.com (gift registry and suggestions)

11/1/1999 - Back to Basics Toys (toy store)

7/14/1999 - Gear.com (sports merchandise)

5/18/1999 - HomeGrocer.com (online grocer)

4/25/1999 - Accept.com (financial transactions)

4/24/1999 - e-Niche Incorporated (Exchange.com, Bibliofind.com, and Musicfile.com - online marketplaces)

4/1/1999 - LiveBid.com (live internet auctions)

3/29/1999 - Pets.com (online pet supplies)

2/1/1999 - Drugstore.com (online drugstore)

2/1/1999 - Geoworks (wireless communications)

1999 - MindCorps Incorporated (web applications - exact date unknown)

8/4/1998 - Sage Enterprises/PlanetAll (web-based personal management)

8/4/1998 - Junglee (web-based databases)

4/27/1998 - Bookpages (UK online bookstore)

4/27/1998 - Telebook (German online bookstore)

4/27/1998 - IMDB (movie and television directory)

Amazon.com has, as expected, revealed the details of its new payment service in a lengthy, meandering blog post. Don't bother reading it: The geeks in Seattle take forever to get to the very sharp point. The short version? Jeff Bezos is planning to plunge a long knife right into the heart of eBay CEO Meg Whitman's most important growth business, PayPal. Here's the secret of how the eBay-owned payments service mints money — and how Amazon.com's founder is crafting a boldly savage plan to gut it.

The first time I met Jeff Bezos, he was trying to sell me something. It was April 1999, and he'd just bought Accept.com, a person-to-person payments business. Bezos was vague about his plans, but my understanding was that he was planning to do to the money-transfer business what he'd already done to booksellers. Of course, it never happened. Amazon buried the business in trying to integrate it. Accept.com CEO Danny Shader, pictured here in a more enthusiastic moment, departed for more entrepreneurial pastures, and PayPal rose from nowhere to take over the online-payments business. Now, I read that Amazon is trying to make up for eight years of lost time by launching its own PayPal competitor, and take on Google Checkout as well. Good luck with that, Jeff.

Have some extra cash laying around? $165 million will land you the most expensive real estate ever and next door to Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. The Beverly Hills mansion sports 6 separate residences, 3 swimming pools, 29 bedrooms, and 6.5 acres. Bezos's comparatively modest estate (nearly 12,000 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 7 baths) cost him a mere $25 million. (For the non-geeks, your other neighbors in the "Platinum Triangle" would include Tom Cruise, David Beckham, and their trophy wives.)

Tim O'Reilly has finally come "out of the VC closet," as one reader notes, with the announcement of O'Reilly Alphatech Ventures. The owner of Web 2.0 plans for his VC arm to invest in "hackers" and "disruptors" and "bionic software" and "photon torpedoes" (note: only one of those is a lie). Current investments include a wifi widget toy, a wiki-style instructional platform, and software to enforce better spending habits. Investors in the O'Reilly venture itself include Omidyar Network and Explore Holdings (the latter, a.k.a. Jeff Bezos). But really, "Alphatech"? Sure, the world is hurting for names, but there's got to be something more original and less bland.

[Photo: Dresden Future Forum]

Bambi Franciso reportulates that Amazon's Jeff Bezos is considering a personal investment in much-hyped natural-language search engine Powerset. It's been widely reported that Powerset planned to use Amazon computing resources, but this would be an unusual vote of confidence from Bezos. Unless he really is just looking for a new toy.

Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, determined to offer FREE Super-Saver Shipping to the entire solar system, this week released photos and video of "Goddard," the first product of Blue Origin. The effort represents Bezos's attempt to offer reasonably priced space travel to the sub-billionaire income bracket. The project's Latin motto, "Gradatim Ferociter," translates approximately to "step fiercely," which sounds like something our gay dance instructor used to call out. (Feel free to correct that translation, Latin nerds, as if we could stop you.) Anyway, if you cared, the test flight was a success. Expect flights of conquering Bezos-pods to loom over your home town by Christmas 2015.

SCOTT KIDDER — Buying holiday gifts on Amazon.com? For anywhere from $2.99 to $5.99, depending on the item, you can have your item gift wrapped. How convenient!

Valleywag contributor Theo DP shreds BusinessWeek's typically gushy cover story on Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos.

There's a phrase for startup founders who quickly tire of running just one company and want a new toy to play with: serial entrepreneurs. Or even parallel entrepreneurs, who stay at one company while founding another.

The rich are different. You, for example, probably have to take care of your own property taxes. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, has the President of the Washington State Bar Association - a Partner at Amazon's corporate law firm who chaired the state's Enron-inspired Ethics Committee - handle the taxes on stately Bezos Manor.

One of Valleywag's eternal would-be contibutors, who tirelessly forwards us his precisely HTML-encoded attacks on Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, sent this little nugget about the Bezos family's literary lives.

Oh Associated Press, you coy little news syndicate! How can you tease us with mentions of "friction bristling beneath the surface" of this week's Idaho media mogul retreat without sharing a story or two? Instead you leave us to imagine scenes like this:

Sent to Valleywag from E3. From left to right:
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and space case
Will Wright, kick-ass game developer who doesn't wash his hands
Robin Williams, best candidate for Google spokesebrity
Bing Gordon, Electronic Arts creative genius who hired a guy through an MMORPG

Virtual world Second Life has hosted a few tech luminaries before, including sci-fi author Cory Doctorow and progressive IP lawyer Larry Lessig. MAKE Magazine blogger Phil Torrone and vlogger Amanda Congdon have tooled around in it too.

Larry Ellison isn't the only one with multi-million-dollar real estate and a pleasure-dome on the sea. The billionaires of the tech industry have a proud tradition of ringing up ridiculous bills.

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