第十九封信中英文对照：

To our shareowners:

致我们的股东：

This year, Amazon became the fastest company ever to reach $100 billion in annual sales. Also this year, Amazon Web Services is reaching $10 billion in annual sales … doing so at a pace even faster than Amazon achieved that milestone.

今年，Amazon成为有史以来最快达到年销售额1000亿美元的公司。其中，AWS的年销售额就达到了100亿美元。AWS的增长速度超过了Amazon本身实现这一里程碑的速度。

What’s going on here? Both were planted as tiny seeds and both have grown organically without significant acquisitions into meaningful and large businesses, quickly. Superficially, the two could hardly be more different. One serves consumers and the other serves enterprises. One is famous for brown boxes and the other for APIs. Is it only a coincidence that two such dissimilar offerings grew so quickly under one roof? Luck plays an outsized role in every endeavor, and I can assure you we’ve had a bountiful supply. But beyond that, there is a connection between these two businesses. Under the surface, the two are not so different after all. They share a distinctive organizational culture that cares deeply about and acts with conviction on a small number of principles. I’m talking about customer obsession rather than competitor obsession, eagerness to invent and pioneer, willingness to fail, the patience to think long-term, and the taking of professional pride in operational excellence. Through that lens, AWS and Amazon retail are very similar indeed.

这一切究竟发生了什么？两者起初都是刚萌芽的种子，而且都在没有大额收购下，自发地成长为有价值的大型企业。从表面上看，两者几乎没有什么不同。一项服务于消费者，另一项服务于企业客户。前者以棕色包装盒闻名，后者以API为人所知。两个如此不同的产品，在同一个屋檐下如此迅速地增长，只是一个巧合吗？运气在事业发展中总会发挥举足轻重的作用，而我们的运气很不错。抛开表面来看，这两项业务之间有一些共通之处。他们都有着独特的组织文化，关注少数原则并坚信不移。我所说的是对客户的关注，而不是对竞争对手的关注。对发明和开拓事业的渴望，并愿意为此承担失败的可能。对长期思考的耐心，以及对卓越运营的自豪感。从这个角度来看，AWS和Amazon零售业务十分相似。

A word about corporate cultures: for better or for worse, they are enduring, stable, hard to change. They can be a source of advantage or disadvantage. You can write down your corporate culture, but when you do so, you’re discovering it, uncovering it – not creating it. It is created slowly over time by the people and by events – by the stories of past success and failure that become a deep part of the company lore. If it’s a distinctive culture, it will fit certain people like a custom-made glove. The reason cultures are so stable in time is because people self-select. Someone energized by competitive zeal may select and be happy in one culture, while someone who loves to pioneer and invent may choose another. The world, thankfully, is full of many high-performing, highly distinctive corporate cultures. We never claim that our approach is the right one – just that it’s ours – and over the last two decades, we’ve collected a large group of like-minded people. Folks who find our approach energizing and meaningful.

这里我想分享一段关于企业文化的描述：无论好与坏，它们都是持久、稳定且难以改变的。它们可能成为某项优点或缺点的来源。你当然可以轻易地用纸和笔写下公司的企业文化，但是这么做并不能创造一种企业文化。企业文化是由人和故事塑造的。随着时间流逝，过去的成功和失败将逐渐成为公司的一部分。如果这是一种独特的文化，那么它就像定制手套一样只适合某些人。文化之所以稳定，其原因是人们的自我选择。充满竞争热情的人，可以在某种文化中感到快乐，而热爱开拓创新的人可以选择另一种文化。值得庆幸的是，世界上充满了许多高效且独特的企业文化。我们从来没有说过我们的方法是绝对正确的－它只不过是我们选择的企业文化，我们用它在过去二十年中吸引了一大批志同道合的人。这些人都认为我们的企业文化充满活力和富有意义。

One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.

我认为让Amazon与众不同的一点就是失败。如果要失败，我相信Amazon是世界上最好的地方（对此我们很有经验！）。失败和发明是密不可分的双胞胎。要想发明创造些什么，你必须先进行实验。如果你事先知道它会起作用，那就称不上实验。大多数大型组织都想要发明的成果，但不愿意承受过程中一系列的失败实验。丰厚的回报通常来自与传统作法的对赌，而传统作法智慧在大多数情况下是正确的。假设有10%的机会能获得100倍的回报，我认为你应该尝试。你的确可能在10次中错了9次，你有可能会挥棒落空，也有可能击出本垒打。然而，棒球与商业之间的区别在于棒球的可能性是有限的。挥棒时，无论你表现得再好，你能跑的垒包数最多就是四个。在商业世界中则不然，你最多可以往前迈进1000步。这种长尾的收益分配，是为什么我认为应该要大胆的原因。最大的赢家，做了最多的实验。

AWS, Marketplace and Prime are all examples of bold bets at Amazon that worked, and we’re fortunate to have those three big pillars. They have helped us grow into a large company, and there are certain things that only large companies can do. With a tip of the hat to our Seattle neighbors, no matter how good an entrepreneur you are, you’re not going to build an all-composite 787 in your garage startup – not one you’d want to fly in anyway. Used well, our scale enables us to build services for customers that we could otherwise never even contemplate. But also, if we’re not vigilant and thoughtful, size could slow us down and diminish our inventiveness.

AWS、Marketplace和Prime都是Amazon大胆下注的例子，最终我们很幸运地拥有这三大支柱。它们帮助我们成长为一家大公司，让我们有机会去做那些只有大公司才能做的事。我们向我们在西雅图的邻居打开大门，提供我们的服务。无论你是多么出色的企业家，你都不可能在车库创业公司中建造一架全复合材料的波音787飞机。我们运用自身的巨大规模来为客户提供服务，如果运用得当，这些服务将是我们以前无法企及的。如果我们不保持警惕，那么规模会使我们放慢脚步，削弱我们的创造力。

As I meet with teams across Amazon, I am continually amazed at the passion, intelligence and creativity on display. Our teams accomplished a lot in the last year, and I’d like to share a few of the highlights of our efforts to nourish and globalize our three big offerings – Prime, Marketplace and AWS. And while I’ll focus on those three, I assure you that we also remain hard at work on finding a fourth.

当我与Amazon的不同团队见面时，我对他们都展现出来的热情、智慧和创造力感到讶异。团队们去年取得了很大的成就，在此我想分享的三大产品－Prime、Marketplace和AWS，重点强调团队为它们付出的努力。尽管我只重点介绍这三个，但我向你保证，我们会继续努力寻找第四个。

Prime

Prime服务

We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member.

我们希望Prime拥有极高的价值，让每个会员都认为非常物超所值。

We’ve grown Prime two-day delivery selection from 1 million items to over 30 million, added Sunday Delivery, and introduced Free Same-Day Delivery on hundreds of thousands of products for customers in more than 35 cities around the world. We’ve added music, photo storage, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and streaming films and TV.

我们已将Prime服务中两天内到货的商品品项从100万件增加至超过3000万件，并新增了「周日到货」服务选项，为全球超过35个城市的顾客推出了当日到货服务，涵盖成千上万种产品。我们新增了音乐、照片存储、Kindle图书馆、串流影音服务。

Prime Now offers members one-hour delivery on an important subset of selection, and was launched only 111 days after it was dreamed up. In that time, a small team built a customer-facing app, secured a location for an urban warehouse, determined which 25,000 items to sell, got those items stocked, recruited and on-boarded new staff, tested, iterated, designed new software for internal use – both a warehouse management system and a driver-facing app – and launched in time for the holidays. Today, just 15 months after that first city launch, Prime Now is serving members in more than 30 cities around the world.

从构想到实现，我们只花了111天就推出了Prime Now服务。会员可在一部份品项中享受1小时内到货的配送服务。当时，一个小团队构建了一个面向消费者的App，在城市仓库中保留一部分位置，决定2.5万件要出售的商品，将这些商品存入仓库，招聘和雇用新员工，进行了软件的设计、测试和迭代，让内部使用的仓库管理系统及面向司机的App及时在假期上线。今天，距离我们在第一个城市推出服务后仅15个月，Prime Now正在为全球30多个城市的会员提供服务。

Prime Video offers exclusives from some of the world’s most passionate storytellers. We want brilliant creators like Jill Soloway, Jason Schwartzman and Spike Lee to take risks and push boundaries. Our original series have already earned more than 120 nominations and won nearly 60 awards, including Golden Globe and Emmy awards. Many of these are stories that might never have been told in the traditional linear programming model. In the pipeline and coming soon are new series and movies from creators like Jeremy Clarkson, David E. Kelley, Woody Allen and Kenneth Lonergan.

Prime Video提供独家内容，这些内容来自世界上最热情的创作者。我们希望像Jill Soloway、Jason Schwartzman和Spike Lee这样的杰出创作者冒险并突破界限。我们最初的系列影集已获得了超过120个提名，获颁近60个奖项，其中包括金球奖和艾美奖。得奖作品中，有许多都是传统叙事方式从未讲过的故事类型。即将上映的作品包括Jeremy Clarkson、David E. Kelley、Woody Allen和Kenneth Lonergan等创作者的新影集和电影。

The Man in the High Castle, based on the Philip K. Dick novel, explores an alternate history where the U.S. lost World War II. It debuted on Prime Video on November 20th and in four weeks became our most-viewed show – receiving acclaim from critics like “…Amazon has the best new drama of the season in The Man in the High Castle” and “The Man in the High Castle accomplishes so much, where most new broadcast TV dramas these days don’t even try.”

根据Philip K.Dick的小说改编，《The Man in the High Castle》讲述了美国在第二次世界大战中失败的另一个平行时空的故事。11月20日在Prime Video上首次播出，在四个星期内荣登成为观看次数最多的节目。节目受到评论家的赞赏，例如「 Amazon拥有本季最佳新影集《The Man in the High Castle》」和「《The Man in the High Castle》的成就之高，是多数新播出的电视剧没有尝试过的。」

These shows are great for customers, and they feed the Prime flywheel – Prime members who watch Prime Video are more likely to convert from a free trial to a paid membership, and more likely to renew their annual subscriptions.

这些节目非常适合顾客，而且他们会推动Prime服务的飞轮运转－观看Prime Video的会员更可能从免费试用转换为付费会员，并且更有可能再次续订。

Finally, our first ever Prime Day surpassed all our expectations – more new members tried Prime that day than any other day in our history. Worldwide order growth increased 266% over the same day the year before, and sellers whose products are Prime-eligible through FBA saw record-breaking sales – with growth nearing 300%.

最终，我们有史以来的第一个针对Prime会员的优惠之日Prime Day大大超出我们的期望－史上增加最多新会员尝试Prime的一天。全球订单比前年同期增长了266％，参与Prime服务的第三方卖家销售额创历史新高，增长率接近300％。

Prime has become an all-you-can-eat, physical-digital hybrid that members love. Membership grew 51% last year – including 47% growth in the U.S. and even faster internationally – and there are now tens of millions of members worldwide. There’s a good chance you’re already one of them, but if you’re not – please be responsible – join Prime.

Prime已成为最受喜爱的无限量吃到饱的会员资格，提供实体产品也提供虚拟产品。去年，Prime会员人数增长了51％（其中美国增长了47％，国际增长速度更快），现在全球有数千万Prime会员。你很有可能已经是其中一员，但如果你还不是－对自己的荷包负责，快加入Prime。

Marketplace

第三方卖家平台Marketplace

We took two big swings and missed – with Auctions and zShops – before we launched Marketplace over 15 years ago. We learned from our failures and stayed stubborn on the vision, and today close to 50% of units sold on Amazon are sold by third-party sellers. Marketplace is great for customers because it adds unique selection, and it’s great for sellers – there are over 70,000 entrepreneurs with sales of more than $100,000 a year selling on Amazon, and they’ve created over 600,000 new jobs. With FBA, that flywheel spins faster because sellers’ inventory becomes Prime-eligible – Prime becomes more valuable for members, and sellers sell more.

15年前，在我们推出Marketplace之前，我们经历两次变动和误判，错过了Aunctions和zShops。我们从失败中汲取教训，对愿景更加坚持。如今，在Amazon上出售的商品中，近50％是由第三方卖家出售的。Marketplace对顾客来说很棒，因为它增加更多独特的选择。Marketplace对卖家也很棒，平台上有超过7万名企业家，他们的年销售额超过10万美元，创造了超过60万个工作机会。借助Amazon配送服务，飞轮的旋转速度更快。第三方卖家的库存商品符合Prime资格，而Prime让顾客的会员资格更有价值，顾客买得更多，卖家则卖出更多。

This year, we created a new program called Seller Fulfilled Prime. We invited sellers who are able to meet a high bar for shipping speed and consistency in service to be part of the Prime program and ship their own orders at Prime speed directly. Those sellers have already seen a significant bump in sales, and the program has led to hundreds of thousands of additional items that are available to Prime customers via free two-day or next-day shipping in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

今年，我们开始了一个新计划程序，称为「第三方卖方Prime计划」。我们邀请那些能满足快速配送要求的第三方卖家加入Prime计划，请他们直接以Prime计划要求的速度配送自己的订单。这些卖家已经感受到销量的巨大提升，此计划为顾客带来了成千上万种新商品可供选择。在美国、英国和德国，这些商品能在两天内或一天内免运送达Prime顾客手中。

We also created the Amazon Lending program to help sellers grow. Since the program launched, we’ve provided aggregate funding of over $1.5 billion to micro, small and medium businesses across the U.S., U.K. and Japan through short-term loans, with a total outstanding loan balance of about $400 million. Stephen Aarstol, surfer and owner of Tower Paddle Boards, is one beneficiary. His business has become one of the fastestgrowing companies in San Diego, in part with a little help from Amazon Lending. Click-to-cash access to capital helps these small enterprises grow, benefits customers with greater selection, and benefits Amazon since our marketplace revenue grows along with the sellers’ sales. We hope to expand Amazon Lending and are now working on ways to partner with banks so they can use their expertise to take and manage the bulk of the credit risk.

我们开启了「Amazon借贷计划」帮助卖家发展。自该计划启动以来，我们已透过短期贷款向美国、英国和日本的微型、中小型企业提供了总计超过15亿美元的资金，其中尚未偿还的贷款余额总计约为4亿美元。Tower Paddle Boards公司的Stephen Aarstol就是其中一位受益者。他的业务已成为圣地亚哥发展最快的公司之一，部分得益于Amazon借贷计划。由于我们的市场收入随着卖家的销售而增长，因此帮助这些小型企业发展能使Amazon受益，让顾客有更多选择。这些小型企业要做的事只有点击页面上的按钮，他们就能获得资金。我们希望扩大Amazon借贷计划，现在正在研究与银行的合作方式，以便银行可以运用其专业知识来承担和管理大部分信贷风险。

In addition to nourishing our big offerings, we work to globalize them. Our Marketplace creates opportunities for sellers anywhere to reach buyers around the world. In the past, many sellers would limit their customer base to their home country due to the practical challenges of selling internationally. To globalize Marketplace and expand the opportunities available to sellers, we built selling tools that empowered entrepreneurs in 172 countries to reach customers in 189 countries last year. These cross-border sales are now nearly a quarter of all third-party units sold on Amazon. To make this possible, we translated hundreds of millions of product listings and provided conversion services among 44 currencies. Even small and niche sellers can now tap into our global customer base and global logistics network. The end result is very different from sellers handling their own one-at-a-time, cross-border fulfillment. Plugable Technologies’ CEO, Bernie Thompson, put it this way: “It really changes the paradigm when you’re able to ship the goods in bulk to a warehouse in Europe or Japan and have those goods be fulfilled in one day or two days.”

除了丰富大型产品，我们也致力于将它们全球化。Marketplace为第三方卖家创造更多商业机会，覆盖全球各地的消费者。过去，由于在跨境销售困难重重，许多卖家会将客群限制在境内。为了使Marketplace全球化，我们开发了相关的销售工具，让全球172个国家的企业家在去年能够触及189个国家的消费者。目前这些跨境销量占Amazon第三方销量的近四分之一。为了实现全球化，我们翻译了数亿种产品列表，提供了44种货币之间的转换服务。现在，即使是小型卖家也可以运用我们的全球客群和物流网络。使用Amazon服务和卖方自己处理跨境物流得到的结果大不相同。Plugable Technologies的CEO Bernie Thompson这样说：「当你能够将货物批量运送到欧洲或日本的仓库，并在一两天内完成商品配送，这确实是范式层级的改变。」

India is another example of how we globalize an offering like Marketplace through customer obsession and a passion for invention. Last year we ran a program called Amazon Chai Cart where we deployed three-wheeled mobile carts to navigate in a city’s business districts, serve tea, water and lemon juice to small business owners and teach them about selling online. In a period of four months, the team traveled 15,280 km across 31 cities, served 37,200 cups of tea and engaged with over 10,000 sellers. Through this program and other conversations with sellers, we found out there was a lot of interest in selling online, but that sellers struggled with the belief that the process was time-consuming, tedious and complex. So, we invented Amazon Tatkal, which enables small businesses to get online in less than 60 minutes. Amazon Tatkal is a specially designed studio-on-wheels offering a suite of launch services including registration, imaging and cataloguing services, as well as basic seller training mechanisms. Since its launch on February 17th, we have reached sellers in 25 cities.

说到透过顾客至上的理念和对发明的热情来推行产品全球化，印度是我们一个很好的例子。去年，我们开始了一个名为Amazon Chai Cart的计划，在城市的商业区中放置三轮移动推车，为小型企业主提供茶、水和柠檬汁，教授他们关于在线零售的知识。在四个月的时间里，该团队在31个城市中行驶了15280公里，提供了37200杯茶，与超过10万名卖家接触。透过该计划，我们发现卖家在在线零售非常感兴趣，但他们认为这一过程耗时、乏味又复杂。因此，我们发明了Amazon Tatkal，它使小型卖家可以在不到60分钟的时间内开始在网络上销售商品。Amazon Tatkal是一款经过特殊设计的移动工作室，提供一整套上架服务，包括注册、拍照和编目服务，以及基本的卖方培训机制。自2月17日推出Amazon Tatkal后，我们已经触及25个城市的卖家。

We’re also globalizing Fulfillment by Amazon, adapting the service to local customer needs. In India, we launched a program called Seller Flex to combine Amazon’s logistics capabilities with sellers’ selection at the local neighborhood level. Sellers set aside a part of their warehouse for storing items to be sold on Amazon, and we configure it as a fulfillment center in our network that can receive and fulfill customer orders. Our team provides guidance on warehouse layout, IT and operational infrastructure, and trains the seller on standard operating procedures to be followed onsite. We’ve now launched 25 operational Seller Flex sites across ten cities.

我们也正在将Amazon配送服务全球化，使服务更适应当地消费者的需求。在印度，我们启动了一个名为Seller Flex的计划，将Amazon的物流能力与当地卖家的商品品项相结合。卖家空出一部分仓库，存放要在Amazon上出售的商品，我们会将其配置为Amazon物流网络中的配送点，可以接收和配送消费者的订单。我们的团队提供关于仓库设计、IT技术和运营的指导，对卖家进行标准操作程序的培训。现在，我们已经在十个城市里启动了25个可运营Seller Flex的站点。

Amazon Web Services

AWS云端运算服务

Just over 10 years ago, AWS started in the U.S. with its first major service, a simple storage service. Today, AWS offers more than 70 services for compute, storage, databases, analytics, mobile, Internet of Things, and enterprise applications. We also offer 33 Availability Zones across 12 geographic regions worldwide, with another five regions and 11 Availability Zones in Canada, China, India, the U.S., and the U.K. to be available in the coming year. AWS started with developers and startups, and now is used by more than a million customers from organizations of every size across nearly every industry – companies like Pinterest, Airbnb, GE, Enel, Capital One, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Philips, Hess, Adobe, McDonald’s, and Time Inc.

就在10年前，AWS开始了在美国的第一项主要业务，即简单存储服务（Simole Storage Service）。如今，AWS提供了计算、存储、数据库、分析、移动端、物联网和企业应用等超过70种服务。明年，我们将在全球12个区域提供33个服务点，其中包含加拿大、中国、印度、美国和英国的11个服务点。AWS从开发人员和初创公司开始，如今服务超过100万名客户，涵盖几乎各行各业不同规模的组织，包括Pinterest、Airbnb、GE、Enel、Capital One、Intuit、Johnson＆Johnson、Philips、Hess、Adobe、McDonald’s和Time。

AWS is bigger than http://Amazon.com was at 10 years old, growing at a faster rate, and – most noteworthy in my view – the pace of innovation continues to accelerate – we announced 722 significant new features and services in 2015, a 40% increase over 2014.

AWS的规模比10年前的Amazon更大，而且增长速度更快。我认为最值得关注的是－创新的步伐依然不断加快。AWS在2015年推出了722种重要的新功能和服务，和2014年相比增长了40％。

Many characterized AWS as a bold – and unusual – bet when we started. “What does this have to do with selling books?” We could have stuck to the knitting. I’m glad we didn’t. Or did we? Maybe the knitting has as much to do with our approach as the arena. AWS is customer obsessed, inventive and experimental, long-term oriented, and cares deeply about operational excellence.

在我们开始时，许多人都将AWS视为大胆且不正常的赌注。「AWS和卖书有什么关系？」我们本来可以固守本业，但很高兴的是我们没有。倘若抛开业务所在领域，就价值观来说，我们依然固守原本的做事方法。AWS依然信奉顾客至上、创新与实验精神、长期主义，并非常重视卓越的运营。

Given 10 years and many iterations, that approach has allowed AWS to rapidly expand into the world’s most comprehensive, widely adopted cloud service. As with our retail business, AWS is made up of many small teams with single-threaded owners, enabling rapid innovation. The team rolls out new functionality almost daily across 70 services, and that new functionality just “shows up” for customers – there’s no upgrading.

经过10年，在多次迭代之后，这样的做事方法已使AWS迅速拓展为世界上最全面、应用最广泛的云服务。和我们的零售业务一样，AWS由许多专业分工的小型团队组成，因此可大大实现快速创新。AWS团队几乎每天都会推出新功能，而且这些新功能可直接使用，无需升级。

Many companies describe themselves as customer-focused, but few walk the walk. Most big technology companies are competitor focused. They see what others are doing, and then work to fast follow. In contrast, 90 to 95% of what we build in AWS is driven by what customers tell us they want. A good example is our new database engine, Amazon Aurora. Customers have been frustrated by the proprietary nature, high cost, and licensing terms of traditional, commercial-grade database providers. And while many companies have started moving toward more open engines like MySQL and Postgres, they often struggle to get the performance they need. Customers asked us if we could eliminate that inconvenient trade-off, and that’s why we built Aurora. It has commercial-grade durability and availability, is fully compatible with MySQL, has up to 5 times better performance than the typical MySQL implementation, but is 1/10th the price of the traditional, commercial-grade database engines. This has struck a resonant chord with customers, and Aurora is the fastest-growing service in the history of AWS. Nearly this same story could be told about Redshift, our managed data warehouse service, which is the second fastest growing service in AWS history – both small and large companies are moving their data warehouses to Redshift.

许多公司说自己是以客户为中心，但很少公司真正实行。多数大型科技公司都以竞争对手为关注核心。他们看到别人在做什么，然后努力迅速跟进。相较之下，AWS有超过9成的功能是由客户告诉我们他们想要什么，进而驱动我们实现。一个绝佳的例子是我们的新数据库引擎Amazon Aurora。出于专用性、高成本和授权条款等特性，传统的商业级数据库并不能让客户满意。尽管许多公司开始转向MySQL和Postgres这类更开放的数据库引擎，但它们通常很难达到客户所需的效能。客户问我们是否能解决折衷带来的不便，于是我们建构了Aurora。Aurora兼具商业级的耐用性和可用性，与MySQL兼容，性能比一般的MySQL高5倍，但价格只有传统商业数据库引擎的十分之一。这引起了客户的好感，Aurora是AWS历史上增长最快的服务。我们几乎可以用同样的故事套用在数据库托管服务Redshift，它是AWS历史上增长第二快的服务－大大小小的公司正将数据库迁移到Redshift。

Our approach to pricing is also driven by our customer-centric culture – we’ve dropped prices 51 times, in many cases before there was any competitive pressure to do so. In addition to price reductions, we’ve also continued to launch new lower cost services like Aurora, Redshift, QuickSight (our new Business Intelligence service), EC2 Container Service (our new compute container service), and Lambda (our pioneering server-less computing capability), while extending our services to offer a range of highly cost-effective options for running just about every type of application or IT use case imaginable. We even roll out and continuously improve services like Trusted Advisor, which alerts customers when they can save money – resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for our customers. I’m pretty sure we’re the only IT vendor telling customers how to stop spending money with us.

我们以客户为中心的文化决定了我们的定价方式－在众多竞争压力面前，我们将价格降低了51倍。除了降价外，我们还继续推出低成本的新服务，例如Aurora、Redshift、QuickSight（新的商业智能服务）、EC2 Container Service（新的计算容器服务）和Lambda（我们的无服务器运算服务），同时也扩展我们的服务，提供一系列极具成本效益的功能。我们推出并不断改进Trusted Advisor，它会在客户应该省钱时提醒他们，这项服务为我们的客户节省了数亿美元。我敢肯定，我们是唯一一家会告诉客户不要再付钱给我们的IT系统供货商。

Whether you are a startup founded yesterday or a business that has been around for 140 years, the cloud is providing all of us with unbelievable opportunities to reinvent our businesses, add new customer experiences, redeploy capital to fuel growth, increase security, and do all of this so much faster than before. MLB Advanced Media is an example of an AWS customer that is constantly reinventing the customer experience. MLB’s Statcast tracking technology is a new feature for baseball fans that measures the position of each player, the baserunners, and the ball as they move during every play on the field, giving viewers on any screen access to empirical data that answers age-old questions like “what could have happened if…” while also bringing new questions to life. Turning baseball into rocket science, Statcast uses a missile radar system to measure every pitched ball’s movements more than 2,000 times per second, streams and collects data in real-time through Amazon Kinesis (our service for processing real-time streaming data), stores the data on Amazon S3, and then performs analytics in Amazon EC2. The suite of services will generate nearly 7 TB of raw statistical data per game and up to 17 PB per season, shedding quantitative light on age-old, but never verified, baseball pearls of wisdom like “never slide into first.”

无论你是昨天创立的初创公司，还是有140年历史的企业，云技术都为我们所有人提供了难以置信的机会。有了云技术，重塑业务的速度比以前更快，可以更快提升客户体验、调整资金促进增长、提升安全性。在AWS的客户中，MLB Advanced Media就是不断重塑客户体验的一个例子。美国职业棒球大联盟的Statcast追踪技术是球迷可使用的一项新功能，它可以测量每位球员、跑垒球员和球在每次比赛中移动时的位置，使球迷可以在任何电子装置上查找历史数据，球迷可以从中找到「如果……将会发生怎样？」的答案。同时也带来了新的问题，Statcast将棒球变得像火箭科学，Statcast采用导弹的雷达系统，以每秒采样2000次的速度测量每颗球的运动，并透过Amazon Kinesis（我们用于处理实时数据的服务）收集数据。数据会存储在Amazon S3上，然后在Amazon EC2中进行分析。每场球赛产生将近7 TB的原始统计数据，每个赛季最多可产生17 PB。于是，从此以后我们可以定量研究「跑一垒时别滑垒」这样的古老智慧是否正确。

About seven years ago, Netflix announced that they were going to move all their applications to the cloud. Netflix chose AWS because it provided them with the greatest scale and the broadest set of services and features. Netflix recently completed their cloud migration, and stories like theirs are becoming increasingly common as companies like Infor, Intuit, and Time Inc., have made plans to move all of their applications to AWS.

大约在七年前，Netflix宣布将把所有应用程序迁移到AWS。Netflix之所以选择AWS，是因为AWS提供了最大的规模、最丰富的服务和功能。近期，Netflix完成了迁移工作。随着Infor、Intuit和Time Inc.等公司计划将其所有应用程序迁移至AWS，这样的事情正变得越来越普遍。

AWS is already good enough today to attract more than 1 million customers, and the service is only going to get better from here. As the team continues their rapid pace of innovation, we’ll offer more and more capabilities to let builders build unfettered, it will get easier and easier to collect, store and analyze data, we’ll continue to add more geographic locations, and we’ll continue to see growth in mobile and “connected” device applications. Over time, it’s likely that most companies will choose not to run their own data centers, opting for the cloud instead.

如今，AWS已经出色到可以吸引超过一百万名客户，而且服务会因此变得更好。随着团队不断加快创新脚步，我们将提供更多功能，使企业可以放开手任意开发，不受束缚。收集、存储和分析数据将变得越来越容易，我们会继续增加服务点，相信未来能在AWS上见到更多移动端应用及物联网设备。随着时间的流逝，大多数公司可能会选择不运行自己的数据中心，转而选择云服务。

Invention Machine

一台发明机器

We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness, and riskacceptance mentality normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.

我们希望成为一家大公司，这间公司就像一台发明机器。巨大的规模，给了我们为客户服务的卓越能力。我们希望能将服务能力与快速创新的脚步、乐于接受风险的心态相结合。

Can we do it? I’m optimistic. We have a good start on it, and I think our culture puts us in a position to achieve the goal. But I don’t think it’ll be easy. There are some subtle traps that even high-performing large organizations can fall into as a matter of course, and we’ll have to learn as an institution how to guard against them. One common pitfall for large organizations – one that hurts speed and inventiveness – is “one-size-fits-all” decision making.

我们做得到吗？对此我很乐观。在这方面，我们一开始的表现不错，我认为我们的文化可以使我们实现目标。但是我认为这并不容易，即使是高效的大型组织也会陷入一些小陷阱，我们必须作为一个学院来学习如何防范这些小陷阱。大型组织常遇到一个陷阱是－想要用一种决策方式决定所有事情，这样的做法会减弱创新的速度与能力。

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.

有些决策的影响是巨大的，甚至是几乎不可逆转的－就像是只有一个通行方向的单向门。这些决定必须条理清晰、谨慎、缓慢地进行，需要经过深思熟虑和咨询。如果通过了单向门以后，你不喜欢看到的景色，那你也无法回到过去。我们可以将这些类决策称为第一类决策。但是大多数决策并非如此－它们是可改变的、可逆转的－就像是有两个通行方向的双向门。如果做出第二类决策不理想，那么你不必忍受长期的后果。你可以重新打开双向门后轻易回到决策前。判断力高的人或组织可以且应该迅速做出第二类决策。

As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention.1 We’ll have to figure out how to fight that tendency.

随着组织规模的扩张，组织将越来越倾向于将第一类决策的决策方式套用在所有决策上，其中包括很多第二类决策。这么做的结果，就是决策缓慢、不敢充分实验，因此减少了发明创造。我们必须搞清楚如何面对这样的决策倾向。

And one-size-fits-all thinking will turn out to be only one of the pitfalls. We’ll work hard to avoid it… and any other large organization maladies we can identify.

一刀切的思维最终会成为陷阱。我们将会努力避免这种情况发生……以及我们所能鉴别的大型组织常见弊病。

Sustainability and Social Invention

永续与社会创新

Our growth has happened fast. Twenty years ago, I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift. In absolute numbers (as opposed to percentages), the past few years have been especially significant. We’ve grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to more than 230,000 now. We’re a bit like parents who look around one day and realize their kids are grown – you blink and it happens.

我们增长迅猛。二十年前，我需要开着我的雪佛兰，把包裹送到邮局。那时，我幻想着拥有一台堆高机。从绝对数字（而不是百分比）来看，过去几年的意义非凡。从2010年的3万名员工，发展到如今超过23万名员工。我们就像父母，有一天环顾四周时才意识到自己的孩子已经长大了－眨眨眼，这一切就发生了。

One thing that’s exciting about our current scale is that we can put our inventive culture to work on moving the needle on sustainability and social issues.

我们目前的规模带来的一切好事是，我们可以利用我们的发明文化，努力推动永续发展与社会议题。

Two years ago we set a long-term goal to use 100% renewable energy across our global AWS infrastructure. We’ve since announced four significant wind and solar farms that will deliver 1.6 million megawatt hours per year of additional renewable energy into the electric grids that supply AWS data centers. Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge has already come online. We reached 25% sustainable energy use across AWS last year, are on track to reach 40% this year, and are working on goals that will cover all of Amazon’s facilities around the world, including our fulfillment centers.

两年前，我们设定了一个长期目标－全球AWS基础设施中的能源来源要达到100%可再生能源。

后来，我们启动建造四座风力发电场和太阳能发电场，它们每年将为AWS数据中心的电网提供160万兆瓦的可再生能源。Amazon位于Fowler Ridge的风力发电场已开始运作。去年，AWS的可再生能源使用率达25%，今年有望达到40％。我们正努力实现在所有Amazon设施中（包括配送中心）完全使用可再生能源的的目标。

We’ll keep expanding our efforts in areas like packaging, where our culture of invention led to a big winner – the Frustration-Free Packaging program. Seven years ago we introduced the initiative with 19 products. Today, there are more than 400,000 globally. In 2015, the program eliminated tens of millions of pounds of excess packaging material. Frustration-Free Packaging is a customer delighter because the packages are easier to open. It’s good for the planet because it creates less waste. And it’s good for shareholders because, with tighter packaging, we ship less “air” and save on transportation costs.

我们会持续包装领域投入心力。在发明文化的引领下，Frustration-Free包装计划取得丰硕成果。七年前，我们最初推出了19种产品，而今年全球共计有超过40种产品。

2015年，Frustration-Free包装计划减少了数千万磅的多余包装材料。Frustration-Free包装是客户满意的选择，因为包装更易于打开，而且对地球有益。Frustration-Free包装计划对股东也有好处，因为包装更加紧实，包装中的空气更少，因此可以节省运输成本。

We also continue to pioneer new programs for employees – like Career Choice, Leave Share, and Ramp Back. Career Choice pre-pays 95% of tuition for courses that teach in-demand skills, regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. We’ll pay for nursing certifications, airplane mechanic courses, and many others. We’re building classrooms with glass walls right in our fulfillment centers as a way to encourage employees to participate in the program and to make it easy. We see the impact through stories like Sharie Warmack – a single mother of eight who worked in one of our Phoenix fulfillment centers. Career Choice paid for Sharie to get licensed to drive an 18-wheeler. Sharie worked hard, passed her tests, and she’s now a long-haul driver for Schneider Trucking – and loving it. This coming year, we’re launching a program to teach other interested companies the benefits of Career Choice and how to implement it.

我们也持续为员工启动新的计划，例如职业选择计划（Career Choice）、假期共享（Leave Share）计划和重返工作计划（Ramp Back）。职业选择计划会为员工预付课程的95％学费，而且不用考虑这些课程教授的技能是否与员工在公司的职位相关。我们将支付护理课程、飞机修护课程和许多其他费用。我们正在配送中心建造新教室，鼓励员工参加此计划，并让计划进行得更顺利。Sharie Warmack等人的故事，让我们看到这个计划带来的影响力。Sharie Warmack是八个孩子的妈妈，在Amazon凤凰城配送中心工作。职业选择计划为Sharie支付了取得半挂式卡车驾驶执照的费用。Sharie努力工作，并通过了测试，现在她是Schneider卡车公司的长途司机－这是一份她热爱的工作。我们将启动计划，向其他对此感兴趣的公司传授职业选择计划的好处，以及如何实施职业选择计划。

Leave Share and Ramp Back are programs that give new parents flexibility with their growing families. Leave Share lets employees share their Amazon paid leave with their spouse or domestic partner if their spouse’s employer doesn’t offer paid leave. Ramp Back gives birth mothers additional control over the pace at which they return to work. Just as with our health care plan, these benefits are egalitarian – they’re the same for our fulfillment center and customer service employees as they are for our most senior executives.

假期共享计划与重返工作计划可为新手父母提供灵活性。如果员工的配偶的雇主不提供带薪休假，则员工的带薪休假额度可与其配偶或家庭伴侣共享。重返工作计划给予妈妈权力，让她们对生完孩子重返工作的节奏有更多控制。就像我们的医疗保健计划一样，这些好处对配送中心和客户服务的基层员工和管理高层员工都是一样的。

Renewable energy, Frustration-Free Packaging, Career Choice, Leave Share, and Ramp Back are examples of a culture that embraces invention and long-term thinking. It’s very energizing to think that our scale provides opportunities to create impact in these areas.

可再生能源、Frustration-Free包装计划、职业选择计划、假期共享计划和重返工作计划正是发明文化和长期思考的结果。规模提供我们这些产生影响力的机会，非常令人为之振奋。

I can tell you it’s a great joy for me to get to work every day with a team of such smart, imaginative, and passionate people. On behalf of all of us at Amazon, thank you for your support as shareholders. As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1.

我可以告诉你，每天与如此聪明、富于想象力和热情的团队一起工作，对我来说是一种极大的快乐。我代表Amazon的所有员工，感谢你作为股东的支持。如同往常，我把我们在1997年写的致股东信附在文末。我们的价值观依然不变，今天依旧是Day 1。

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

杰夫·贝索斯

Amazon创始人暨CEO

我的观点

这是2015年，亚马逊成为了年销售额1000亿美元的公司，其中AWS还在高速增长。

贝索斯觉得亚马逊增长迅速的原因是因为：鼓励创新，鼓励失败的企业文化。 这种独特的企业文化，关注少数原则并坚信不移，才让亚马逊这么快速的增长。

他认为亚马逊的成功是因为对客户的关注，而不是对竞争对手的关注。对发明和开拓事业的渴望，并愿意为此承担失败的可能。对长期思考的耐心，以及对卓越运营的自豪感。

亚马逊的企业文化描述，我感觉也不错——无论好与坏，它们都是持久、稳定且难以改变的。企业文化其实都是人，人创造故事，然后人和故事塑造企业文化。

贝索斯还鼓励失败，还说亚马逊是世界上最好对待失败的地方。他认为失败和发明密不可分，大多数的大型组织只想要发明的成果，但是不想承担失败，这是不对的。 其实最大的赢家，是做最多实验的那位。

他还提到大型组织常遇到一个陷阱是－想要用一种决策方式决定所有事情，这样的做法会减弱创新的速度与能力。做决策，不能一刀切。

确实，一直都没有银弹，也没有永远实用的决策方式，大公司肯定是没有小公司能够创新的。但是为什么亚马逊还这么能创新呢？

第十八封信中英文对照：

To our shareowners:

致我们的股东：

A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics. Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it’s durable in time – with the potential to endure for decades. When you find one of these, don’t just swipe right, get married

理想的商业产品至少具有四种特征。第一是客户喜欢它，第二是它可以成长至很大的规模，第三是具有够高的资本回报率，第四是不随时间变化－有可能持续增长数十年。当你找到商业产品具备任一种特征时，千万别向右滑（交友App上的拒绝手势），选择它就对了！

Well, I’m pleased to report that Amazon hasn’t been monogamous in this regard. After two decades of risk taking and teamwork, and with generous helpings of good fortune all along the way, we are now happily wed to what I believe are three such life partners: Marketplace, Prime, and AWS. Each of these offerings was a bold bet at first, and sensible people worried (often!) that they could not work. But at this point, it’s become pretty clear how special they are and how lucky we are to have them. It’s also clear that there are no sinecures in business. We know it’s our job to always nourish and fortify them.

我很高兴地跟大家报告，Amazon在寻找商业机会上并不遵守「一夫一妻制」。经过二十多年的冒险与团队合作，加上一路走来的好运，我们很高兴地宣布Amazon已经拥有3个很棒的产品：第三方卖家平台Marketplace、Prime会员服务和Amazon网络服务AWS。这些产品都曾是大胆的赌注，不少明智的人曾很担心无法成功。现在，我们已经很清楚它们的特殊性，也很幸运地把它们成功做好。我们很清楚，商业世界没有不劳而获的轻松事。我们很清楚，不断优化它们是我们的职责。

We’ll approach the job with our usual tools: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, heartfelt passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and a willingness to think long-term. With good execution and a bit of continuing good luck, Marketplace, Prime, and AWS can be serving customers and earning financial returns for many years to come.

我们将会透过一贯的做法来优化产品。关注顾客，而不是关注竞争对手。对发明创新充满热情，对卓越许下承诺，并且总是长期思考。良好的执行加上一点运气，Marketplace、Prime和AWS可以为客户提供服务，并在未来很多年内获得财务回报。

Marketplace

第三方卖家平台Marketplace

Marketplace’s early days were not easy. First, we launched Amazon Auctions. I think seven people came, if you count my parents and siblings. Auctions transformed into zShops, which was basically a fixed price version of Auctions. Again, no customers. But then we morphed zShops into Marketplace. Internally, Marketplace was known as SDP for Single Detail Page. The idea was to take our most valuable retail real estate – our product detail pages – and let third-party sellers compete against our own retail category managers. It was more convenient for customers, and within a year, it accounted for 5% of units. Today, more than 40% of our units are sold by more than two million third-party sellers worldwide. Customers ordered more than two billion units from sellers in 2014.

在早期，Marketplace并不容易。首先，我们推出了Amazon Auction。把我的父母和兄弟姊妹都算上，一共就七个人使用吧！接着，Auction转变为zShops，zShops基本上就是一个固定价格版的Auction。结果和Auction一样，没有人使用zShops。于是，我们将zShops转变为Marketplace。在Amazon内部，Marketplace被称为「单页式详细信息页」。我们的想法是将Amazon最有价值的资产，也就是产品详细信息页提供给第三方卖家，让第三方卖家跟我们自己的零售经理竞争。这么做对于消费者来说更加方便，在一年内提升5%销量。如今，超过40%的销量来自全球200万个第三方卖家，消费者向他们购买超过20亿个产品。

The success of this hybrid model accelerated the Amazon flywheel. Customers were initially drawn by our fast-growing selection of Amazon-sold products at great prices with a great customer experience. By then allowing third parties to offer products side-by-side, we became more attractive to customers, which drew even more sellers. This also added to our economies of scale, which we passed along by lowering prices and eliminating shipping fees for qualifying orders. Having introduced these programs in the U.S., we rolled them out as quickly as we could to our other geographies. The result was a marketplace that became seamlessly integrated with all of our global websites.

混合第三方卖家和我们的商业模式，加速Amazon的「飞轮」转动速度。消费者最初是被我们的快速增加的商品数、优惠的价格及良好的客户体验吸引，接着我们开放第三方卖家平台，让消费者拥有更多选择，进而吸引更多卖家到Amazon贩卖商品。我们持续降价，并让符合条件的商品能够免除运费，进一步提升了我们的商业规模。最终的结果是，第三方卖家平台Marketplace和我们的网站无缝衔接。以上所提到的做法已经在美国实行，我们将会尽快推行到更多地方。

We work hard to reduce the workload for sellers and increase the success of their businesses. Through our Selling Coach program, we generate a steady stream of automated machine-learned “nudges” (more than 70 million in a typical week) – alerting sellers about opportunities to avoid going out-of-stock, add selection that’s selling, and sharpen their prices to be more competitive. These nudges translate to billions in increased sales to sellers.

我们致力于降低卖家的工作负担，提升卖家的业务量。透过Selling Coach计划，我们一周发出超过7千万次基于机器学习的自动化提醒，提醒卖家商品即将完售，或是给予建议让他们的商品价格更具竞争力。这些提醒帮助卖方增加销售额数十亿美元。

To further globalize Marketplace, we’re now helping sellers in each of our geographies – and in countries where we don’t have a presence – reach out to our customers in countries outside their home geographies. We hosted merchants from more than 100 different countries last year, and helped them connect with customers in 185 nations.

为了进一步扩大Marketplace的全球化范围，我们目前在各个区域帮助卖家，也积极在尚未开展业务的区域与客户联系。去年，我们服务了全球超过100个国家的卖家，帮助他们与全球185个国家的客户建立联系。

Almost one-fifth of our overall third-party sales now occur outside the sellers’ home countries, and our merchants’ cross-border sales nearly doubled last year. In the EU, sellers can open a single account, manage their business in multiple languages, and make products available across our five EU websites. More recently, we’ve started consolidating cross-border shipments for sellers and helping them obtain ocean shipping from Asia to Europe and North America at preferential, bulk rates.

现在，第三方卖家的销售额有近五分之一是产生于卖家所在国家以外的地方，卖家的销售额去年几乎翻了一倍。在欧盟，卖家只要开设一个账户，就可以在我们的五个欧盟国家的网站，以多国语言管理其业务。最近，我们开始为卖家合并订单进行跨境运输，帮助他们以更低的价格将货品从亚洲送到欧洲和北美。

Marketplace is the heart of our fast-growing operations in India, since all of our selection in India is offered by third-party sellers. http://Amazon.in now offers more selection than any other e-commerce site in India – with more than 20 million products offered from over 21,000 sellers. With our Easy Ship service, we pick up products from a seller and handle delivery all the way to the end customer. Building upon Easy Ship, the India team recently piloted Kirana Now, a service that delivers everyday essentials from local kirana (mom and pop) stores to customers in two to four hours, adding convenience for our customers and increasing sales for the stores participating in the service.

Marketplace是我们在印度快速增长的驱动核心，因为我们在印度的所有商品都是由第三方卖家提供，Amazon印度站目前是全印度品项最多的电子商务网站－由2.1万名卖家提供超过2000万种商品。我们提供Easy Ship服务，从卖家到买家的整个物流都由我们来处理。印度团队基于Easy Ship的基础上，最近开始了一项新业务Kirana Now。这项服务可在两到四个小时内，向消费者提供kirana商店的日常必需品。这为我们的顾客增加便利，并增加了kirana商店的销售额

Perhaps most important for sellers, we’ve created Fulfillment by Amazon. But I’ll save that for after we discuss Prime.

也许对第三方卖家来说，最重要的是Amazon物流服务。我会在Prime服务之后讨论它。

Amazon Prime

Prime服务

Ten years ago, we launched Amazon Prime, originally designed as an all-you-can-eat free and fast shipping program. We were told repeatedly that it was a risky move, and in some ways it was. In its first year, we gave up many millions of dollars in shipping revenue, and there was no simple math to show that it would be worth it. Our decision to go ahead was built on the positive results we’d seen earlier when we introduced Free Super Saver Shipping, and an intuition that customers would quickly grasp that they were being offered the best deal in the history of shopping. In addition, analysis told us that, if we achieved scale, we would be able to significantly lower the cost of fast shipping.

10年前，我们发布了Prime服务，最初是为了提供吃到饱的快速运送服务。我们被一再告知，这会有很大的风险。从某些层面来说，的确如此。最初的一年，我们因此牺牲了数百万的物流收入，而且无从证明这么做是有价值的。我们之所以选择继续实行，是因为我们看到先前的Free Super Saver Shipping得到的积极结果，因此直觉地认为顾客会迅速了解Prime服务有多么棒，能够提供他们有史以来最优惠的服务。此外，分析师告诉我们，如果我们形成规模经济，将能够大大降低物流的成本。

Our owned-inventory retail business was the foundation of Prime. In addition to creating retail teams to build each of our category-specific online “stores,” we have created large-scale systems to automate much of inventory replenishment, inventory placement, and product pricing. The precise delivery-date promise of Prime required operating our fulfillment centers in a new way, and pulling all of this together is one of the great accomplishments of our global operations team. Our worldwide network of fulfillment centers has expanded from 13 in 2005, when we launched Prime, to 109 this year. We are now on our eighth generation of fulfillment center design, employing proprietary software to manage receipt, stowing, picking, and shipment. Amazon Robotics, which began with our acquisition of Kiva in 2012, has now deployed more than 15,000 robots to support the stowing and retrieval of products at a higher density and lower cost than ever before. Our ownedinventory retail business remains our best customer-acquisition vehicle for Prime and a critical part of building out categories that attract traffic and third-party sellers.

我们既有的零售业务，正是Prime服务的基础。除了创建零售团队，建立我们在线各类别的商店外，我们也建立大型自动化系统，调节库存数量、库存商品放置和定价。由于Prime会员的商品需要在两天内送达，因此对我们配送中心的运营方式有更高的要求。将这些整合在一起，是我们的全球运营团队的一大成就。2005年刚推出Prime服务时，我们的全球配送网络只有13个配送中心，今年则扩展到109个。我们正在设计第8代配送中心，采用专门的软件来管理收货、存货、捡货和运送。Amazon机器人的发展，始于2012年我们对Kiva的收购，如今已经布署了1.5万个机器人，以更高的机器人密度和更低的成本支持库存商品的存放和捡取。我们卓越的零售业务，依然是帮助扩大Prime会员数的最佳利器，带来更多的流量，也吸引更多的第三方卖家。

Though fast delivery remains a core Prime benefit, we are finding new ways to pump energy into Prime. Two of the most important are digital and devices.

尽管快速到货仍然是Prime服务的核心优势，但我们正在寻找增强Prime服务的新方法。最重要的两件事分别是数字化和硬件装置。

In 2011 we added Prime Instant Video as a benefit, now with tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes available for unlimited streaming in the U.S., and we’ve started expanding the program into the U.K. and Germany as well. We’re investing a significant amount on this content, and it’s important that we monitor its impact. We ask ourselves, is it worth it? Is it driving Prime? Among other things, we watch Prime free trial starts, conversion to paid membership, renewal rates, and product purchase rates by members entering through this channel. We like what we see so far and plan to keep investing here.

2011年，我们新增了Prime Instant Video作为Prime服务的内容。现在，美国站有成千上万种电影和电视剧可供用户无限次数播放。我们也开始扩大英国站和德国站的Prime服务。我们大量投资于内容，并不断关注内容的影响力。我们会问自己：这么做是否值得？它能驱动Prime会员数增长吗？我们还观察了Prime的免费试用者数量、转换为付费用户的比率、续订率和购买率。目前为止，我们对此表现感到满意，并计划加大投资。

While most of our PIV spend is on licensed content, we’re also starting to develop original content. The team is off to a strong start. Our show Transparent became the first from a streaming service to win a Golden Globe for best series and Tumble Leaf won the Annie for best animated series for preschoolers. In addition to the critical acclaim, the numbers are promising. An advantage of our original programming is that its first run is on Prime – it hasn’t already appeared anywhere else. Together with the quality of the shows, that first run status appears to be one of the factors leading to the attractive numbers. We also like the fixed cost nature of original programming. We get to spread that fixed cost across our large membership base. Finally, our business model for original content is unique. I’m pretty sure we’re the first company to have figured out how to make winning a Golden Globe pay off in increased sales of power tools and baby wipes!

尽管我们的支出多用于授权内容，但我们也开始推出我们的原创内容。团队开局表现不错。我们的节目《Transparent》是流媒体服务中第一个获得金球奖（Golden Globe）的系列影集，而《Tumble Leaf》则获得了安妮奖（Annie）学龄前儿童最佳动画片奖。除了广受好评外，数据表现也很亮眼。原创内容的一个优点是，它在其他地方都没出现过，首次开播就是在Prime上进行。加上节目的质量很好，首次开播似乎是吸引观众的原因之一。我们还喜欢原创内容的「固定成本」特性。我们将固定成本分摊至我们的广大会员基础上。最后，我们原创内容的商业模式是独一无二的。我敢肯定，我们是第一家找到如何透过增加电动工具和婴儿湿巾的销售额来赢得金球奖的公司！

Amazon designed and manufactured devices – from Kindle to Fire TV to Echo – also pump energy into Prime services such as Prime Instant Video and Prime Music, and generally drive higher engagement with every element of the Amazon ecosystem. And there’s more to come – our device team has a strong and exciting roadmap ahead.

Amazon设计和制造的设备－从Kindle到Fire TV再到Echo，也将能量注入Prime服务。例如Prime Instant Video和Prime Music，驱动Amazon生态系统各个要素的彼此相连。未来将会更加精采可期－我们的硬件团队拥有强大而令人兴奋的发展计划。

Prime isn’t done improving on its original fast and free shipping promise either. The recently launched Prime Now offers Prime members free two-hour delivery on tens of thousands of items or one-hour delivery for a $7.99 fee. Lots of early reviews read like this one, “In the past six weeks my husband and I have made an embarrassing number of orders through Amazon Prime Now. It’s cheap, easy, and insanely fast.” We’ve launched in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Miami, Baltimore, Dallas, Atlanta, and Austin, and more cities are coming soon.

Prime没有违背其最初的快速免费送货承诺。最近，我们推出Prime Now。只要7.99美元，Prime会员可以在1小时内收到商品。若你可以接受2小时内收获，那将不用收取额外费用。先前的评论都是这样写的：「过去六周，我和我的丈夫透过Amazon Prime Now下了许多订单订单。这项服务便宜、方便、快捷。」我们已经在曼哈顿、布鲁克林、迈阿密、巴尔的摩、达拉斯、亚特兰大和奥斯汀推出这项服务，并且很快就会推展到更多城市。

Now, I’d like to talk about Fulfillment by Amazon. FBA is so important because it is glue that inextricably links Marketplace and Prime. Thanks to FBA, Marketplace and Prime are no longer two things. In fact, at this point, I can’t really think about them separately. Their economics and customer experiences are now happily and deeply intertwined.

现在，我想谈谈Amazon配送服务。它之所以如此重要，是因为它将第三方卖家平台Marketplace与Prime紧密联系在一起。有了Amazon配送服务，Marketplace和Prime不再是两件不同的事。实际上，此刻我无法把它们分开思考。现在，它们的商业价值和客户体验已深深地交织在一起。

FBA is a service for Marketplace sellers. When a seller decides to use FBA, they stow their inventory in our fulfillment centers. We take on all logistics, customer service, and product returns. If a customer orders an FBA item and an Amazon owned-inventory item, we can ship both items to the customer in one box – a huge efficiency gain. But even more important, when a seller joins FBA, their items can become Prime eligible.

Amazon配送服务是针对第三方卖家的服务。当卖家决定使用Amazon配送服务时，他们会将库存商品放在我们的库存中心。我们负责所有物流、客服和退货服务。如果顾客订购的商品分别是Amazon自有商品和第三方卖家的商品，我们可以将两件商品装在同一个盒子寄给客户－这样极大地提高效率。更重要的是，当卖家加入Amazon配送服务时，他们的商品对Prime会员更有吸引力。

Maintaining a firm grasp of the obvious is more difficult than one would think it should be. But it’s useful to try. If you ask, what do sellers want? The correct (and obvious) answer is: they want more sales. So, what happens when sellers join FBA and their items become Prime eligible? They get more sales.

即使一件事情的价值很明显，但要持续坚持自己的想法，并不是一件很容易的事。但是，坚持过后你会发现这么做很有价值。如果你问，卖家想要什么？正确且显而易见的答案是：他们想要更多的销售额。那么，当卖家加入Amazon配送服务后，在他们的商品成为Prime会员可购买的免运商品时会发生什么事？他们如愿获得更多的销售额。

Notice also what happens from a Prime member’s point of view. Every time a seller joins FBA, Prime members get more Prime eligible selection. The value of membership goes up. This is powerful for our flywheel. FBA completes the circle: Marketplace pumps energy into Prime, and Prime pumps energy into Marketplace.

另一个值得关注的是，从Prime会员的角度来看这会形成循环。每当卖家加入Amazon配送服务，Prime会员都会获得更多可使用Prime的品项，Prime会员的价值上升。这对于我们的飞轮而言很有帮助，Amazon配送服务完成了这一循环：Marketplace将能量注入Prime，Prime也将能量注入Marketplace。

In a 2014 survey of U.S. sellers, 71% of FBA merchants reported more than a 20% increase in unit sales after joining FBA. In the holiday period, worldwide FBA units shipped grew 50% over the prior year and represented more than 40% of paid third-party units. Paid Prime memberships grew more than 50% in the U.S. last year and 53% worldwide. FBA is a win for customers and a win for sellers.

2014年，在一个对美国的第三方卖家调查显示，加入Amazon配送服务之后，71％的卖家表示单位销售量增长20％以上。在假期期间，全球范围的Amazon配送服务运送量比上一年增长50％，占第三方卖家发货量的40％以上。去年美国的Prime会员数量增长了50％以上，全球会员则增长了53％。Amazon配送服务对客户和卖家而言都是双赢。

Amazon Web Services

Amazon云端运算服务

A radical idea when it was launched nine years ago, Amazon Web Services is now big and growing fast. Startups were the early adopters. On-demand, pay-as-you-go cloud storage and compute resources dramatically increased the speed of starting a new business. Companies like Pinterest, Dropbox, and Airbnb all used AWS services and remain customers today.

九年前推出AWS时，这是一个激进的想法。如今，AWS已经发展壮大并发展迅速。初创公司是最早采用的客户。按需购买，用多少付多少的云存储和计算资源，极大提高了新业务的开展速度。诸如Pinterest、Dropbox和Airbnb等公司，都使用AWS服务，而且今天还是我们的客户。

Since then, large enterprises have been coming on board as well, and they’re choosing to use AWS for the same primary reason the startups did: speed and agility. Having lower IT cost is attractive, and sometimes the absolute cost savings can be enormous. But cost savings alone could never overcome deficiencies in performance or functionality. Enterprises are dependent on IT – it’s mission critical. So, the proposition, “I can save you a significant amount on your annual IT bill and my service is almost as good as what you have now,” won’t get too many customers. What customers really want in this arena is “better and faster,” and if “better and faster” can come with a side dish of cost savings, terrific. But the cost savings is the gravy, not the steak.

自那时起，大型企业也逐渐成为我们的客户，他们选择使用AWS的原因与初创企业相同：速度和弹性。IT成本较低是一件很有吸引力的事，有时省下来的成本非常可观。但是，仅凭降低成本，并不能克服性能或功能上的不足。AWS所牵涉的是至关重要的任务－因为企业仰赖IT。因此，「我可以为你节省大笔IT账单，而我们提供的服务几乎和你现在使用的服务一样好」的主张并不能吸引足够多的客户。客户真正想要的是「更快、更好」的服务，而这样的服务如果可以带来「成本上的优势」，那就太棒了。节省成本是附带的肉汁，而不是牛排本身。

IT is so high leverage. You don’t want to imagine a competitor whose IT department is more nimble than yours. Every company has a list of technology projects that the business would like to see implemented as soon as possible. The painful reality is that tough triage decisions are always made, and many projects never get done. Even those that get resourced are often delivered late or with incomplete functionality. If an IT department can figure out how to deliver a larger number of business-enabling technology projects faster, they’ll be creating significant and real value for their organization.

IT的杠杆率很高。你不会想看到竞争对手的IT部门比你的更敏捷。每家公司都有一份技术项目列表，企业希望尽快实现的技术项目列表。然而，资源有限带来的现实是必须取舍，总会有许多项目无法完成。即使是那些投入资源的项目，往往也无法准时交付，或者功能并不完整。如果IT部门能够找到更高效地交付技术项目的方法，那么他们将为组织创造巨大的价值。

These are the main reasons AWS is growing so quickly. IT departments are recognizing that when they adopt AWS, they get more done. They spend less time on low value-add activities like managing datacenters, networking, operating system patches, capacity planning, database scaling, and so on and so on. Just as important, they get access to powerful APIs and tools that dramatically simplify building scalable, secure, robust, high-performance systems. And those APIs and tools are continuously and seamlessly upgraded behind the scenes, without customer effort.

这就是AWS快速发展的主因。IT部门了解到，当他们采用AWS时，他们能做更多事情。他们将较少的时间花在低附加价值的事情上，例如管理数据中心、建立网络、修复操作系统补丁、扩容、数据库扩展等等。同样重要的是，他们可以使用强大的API和工具，将构建可扩展、安全、强大的高性能系统的过程大大简化。这些API和工具由我们持续升级，无需客户耗费心力。

Today, AWS has more than a million active customers as companies and organizations of all sizes use AWS in every imaginable business segment. AWS usage grew by approximately 90% in the fourth quarter of 2014 versus the prior year. Companies like GE, Major League Baseball, Tata Motors, and Qantas are building new applications on AWS – these range from apps for crowdsourcing and personalized healthcare to mobile apps for managing fleets of trucks. Other customers, like NTT DOCOMO, the Financial Times, and the Securities and Exchange Commission are using AWS to analyze and take action on vast amounts of data. And many customers like Conde´ Nast, Kellogg’s, and News Corp are migrating legacy critical applications and, in some cases, entire datacenters to AWS.

如今，随着各种规模的公司和组织，在各个领域中使用AWS，AWS拥有超过一百万名活跃客户。2014年第四季度，AWS使用量同比增长了约90％。通用电气、美国职业棒球大联盟、塔塔汽车和澳洲航空等公司，正在AWS上建构新应用－从众包、个性化医疗到管理卡车车队的新应用。NTT DOCOMO、金融时报和证券交易委员会，正在使用AWS来分析大量数据并以此采取行动。Conde´ Nast，Kellogg’s和News Corp等客户，正在将旧应用迁移至AWS，有些客户甚至将整个数据中心迁移至AWS。

We’ve increased our pace of innovation as we’ve gone along – from nearly 160 new features and services in 2012, to 280 in 2013, and 516 last year. There are many that would be interesting to talk about – from WorkDocs and WorkMail to AWS Lambda and the EC2 Container Service to the AWS Marketplace – but for purposes of brevity, I’m going to limit myself to one: our recently introduced Amazon Aurora. We hope Aurora will offer customers a new normal for a very important (but also very problematic) technology that is a critical underpinning of many applications: the relational database. Aurora is a MySQL-compatible database engine that offers the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost effectiveness of open source databases. Aurora’s performance is up to 5x better than typical MySQL databases, at one-tenth the cost of commercial database packages. Relational databases is an arena that’s been a pain point for organizations and developers for a long time, and we’re very excited about Aurora.

我们一直不断创新。2012年，AWS包含近160种新功能和服务，到2013年这个数字是280种，到2014年则变成516种。这中间有很多有趣的话题－从WorkDocs、WorkMail到AWS Lambda，从EC2 Container Service到AWS Marketplace。为了篇幅简洁起见，我将只提及一项：我们最近推出的Amazon Aurora。我们希望Aurora为客户提供一项非常重要（但经常是个问题）的技术方案，提供很多应用的关键基础－关系数据库。Aurora是与MySQL兼容的数据库引擎，可提供高端商业数据库所需的速度及可用性，并兼具开源数据库的易用性和低成本。Aurora的性能比典型的MySQL数据库高出5倍，价格却是商业数据库的十分之一。关系数据库是解决长期困扰组织和开发人员痛点的起点，我们对Aurora的前景感到无比兴奋。

I believe AWS is one of those dreamy business offerings that can be serving customers and earning financial returns for many years into the future. Why am I optimistic? For one thing, the size of the opportunity is big, ultimately encompassing global spend on servers, networking, datacenters, infrastructure software, databases, data warehouses, and more. Similar to the way I think about Amazon retail, for all practical purposes, I believe AWS is market-size unconstrained.

我相信AWS将在未来很多年为客户提供服务，并获得财务回报的梦幻产品。为什么我如此乐观？AWS面向的商业规模巨大，涵盖了全球的服务器、网络、数据中心、基础架构软件、数据库等方面。用我对Amazon零售业务的思考方式来看，我相信AWS的市场规模将不受限制。

Second, its current leadership position (which is significant) is a strong ongoing advantage. We work hard – very hard – to make AWS as easy to use as possible. Even so, it’s still a necessarily complex set of tools with rich functionality and a non-trivial learning curve. Once you’ve become proficient at building complex systems with AWS, you do not want to have to learn a new set of tools and APIs assuming the set you already understand works for you. This is in no way something we can rest on, but if we continue to serve our customers in a truly outstanding way, they will have a rational preference to stick with us.

其次，AWS目前的市场领先地位将持续带给我们优势。我们努力工作，非常努力地使AWS尽可能易于使用。即便如此，出于它自身的特质，它依然是复杂的一套工具组。AWS具备丰富的功能，因此学习起来也很复杂。然而，一旦你精通使用AWS构建系统后，你就不会想再学习一套新的工具和API。你将对这套工具产生依赖，但这绝不是我们可以懈怠的理由。我们相信若我们继续以出色的方式为客户提供服务，出于理性他们将会持续支持我们。

In addition, also because of our leadership position, we now have thousands of what are effectively AWS ambassadors roaming the world. Software developers changing jobs, moving from one company to another, become our best sales people: “We used AWS where I used to work, and we should consider it here. I think we’d get more done.” It’s a good sign that proficiency with AWS and its services is already something software developers are adding to their resumes.

此外，由于我们具备市场领先地位，我们现在拥有成千上万名、遍及全球的AWS宣传大使。当软件开发人员从一家公司换到另一家公司，他们会成为我们最好的销售人员：「我以前工作过的地方使用AWS，我认为我们应该也考虑使用AWS。如此一来，我们能把更多事情做好。」这证明了「熟悉AWS及其服务」已成为软件开发人员能写上简历的内容。

Finally, I’m optimistic that AWS will have strong returns on capital. This is one we as a team examine because AWS is capital intensive. The good news is we like what we see when we do these analyses. Structurally, AWS is far less capital intensive than the mode it’s replacing – do-it-yourself datacenters – which have low utilization rates, almost always below 20%. Pooling of workloads across customers gives AWS much higher utilization rates, and correspondingly higher capital efficiency. Further, once again our leadership position helps: scale economies can provide us a relative advantage on capital efficiency. We’ll continue to watch and shape the business for good returns on capital.

最后，我对AWS将获得可观的资本回报感到乐观。由于AWS是资本密集的投资，因此我们团队曾对这项投资进行研究。好消息是，分析得到的结果是我们乐见的。从整体来看，AWS相较于其所取代的模式，也就是自己动手建立数据中心相比，其资本密集度低得多。后者的使用率较低，从头到尾几乎都低于20％。由于需服务多个不同客户，因此AWS的使用率更高，相应地提升了资本效率。此外，我们的市场领先地位也有助于形成规模经济，这可以提升我们在资本效率层面的相对优势。我们将继续关注和塑造AWS业务，以取得良好的资本回报。

AWS is young, and it is still growing and evolving. We think we can continue to lead if we continue to execute with our customers’ needs foremost in mind.

AWS还很年轻，还在不断发展和演进。我们认为，如果我们始终聚焦客户的需求，我们将持续保持市场领先地位。

Career Choice

职业选择计划

Before closing, I want to take a moment to update shareowners on something we’re excited about and proud of. Three years ago we launched an innovative employee benefit – the Career Choice program, where we pre-pay 95% of tuition for 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 idea was simple: enable choice.

在结束之前，我想花一点时间向股东们介绍一些我们感到兴奋和自豪的事。三年前，我们推出了一项创新的员工福利计划－职业选择计划（Career Choice）。此计划为员工预付95％的学费，供他们选修飞机修护或护理等领域的课程，无论该课程教授的技能是否与员工在Amazon的工作有关。这个计划背后的想法很简单：提供员工选择权。

We know that, for some of our fulfillment and customer service 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, and so far we have been able to help over 2,000 employees who have participated in the program in eight different countries. There’s been so much interest that we are now building onsite classrooms so college and technical classes can be taught inside our fulfillment centers, making it even easier for associates to achieve these goals.

我们很清楚，对于我们的某些配送中心和客服中心的员工而言，Amazon是他们的职业选择。对于其他人而言，Amazon可能是通往其他工作的垫脚石，而之后的工作可能需要新技能。如果经过适当的培训对员工有益处，我们乐于提供帮助。到目前为止，我们已经能够帮助8个国家的2000多名员工参加了该计划。员工们非常感兴趣，我们正在建立线下教室，以便可以在我们的配送中心内教授大学课程和技术课程，从而使员工更容易实现自己的职业目标。

There are now eight FCs offering 15 classes taught onsite in our purpose-built classrooms with high-end technology features, and designed with glass walls to inspire others to participate and generate encouragement from peers. We believe Career Choice is an innovative way to draw great talent to serve customers in our fulfillment and customer service centers. These jobs can become gateways to great careers with Amazon as we expand around the world or enable employees the opportunity to follow their passion in other in-demand technical fields, like our very first Career Choice graduate did when she started a new career as a nurse in her community.

目前在8个配送中心中，设有15间专用教室提供现场授课。这些教室采用玻璃墙设计，激励人们参与并与同侪互相鼓励。我们认为，职业选择计划是一种创新方案，可以吸引优秀人才到Amazon工作，为客户提供服务。随着我们在全球范围内的事业拓展，这些工作将为Amazon员工开启伟大的职业生涯，给予员工机会追寻他们在其他领域的热情。就像我们第一位职业选择计划的毕业生一样，她在小区开始了新的护理师职涯。

I would also like to invite you to come join the more than 24,000 people who have signed up so far to see the magic that happens after you click buy on http://Amazon.com by touring one of our fulfillment centers. In addition to U.S. tours, we are now offering tours at sites around the world, including Rugeley in the U.K. and Graben in Germany and continuing to expand. You can sign up for a tour at http://www.amazon.com/fctours.

我还想邀请你参观我们的配送中心，目前为止已有2万4千多人报名，以了解点击Amazon网站上的「购买」按钮之后会发生的事。除了美国站的导览，我们也在世界各站提供导览，包括英国的Rugeley和德国的Graben，开放参观的站点也会越来越多，你可以在http://www.amazon.com/fctours上报名参加。

Marketplace, Prime, and Amazon Web Services are three big ideas. We’re lucky to have them, and we’re determined to improve and nurture them – make them even better for customers. You can also count on us to work hard to find a fourth. We’ve already got a number of candidates in work, and as we promised some twenty years ago, we’ll continue to make bold bets. With the opportunities unfolding in front of us to serve customers better through invention, we assure you we won’t stop trying.

Marketplace、Prime和AWS是我们事业的三大支柱，我们非常幸运能拥有它们。我们决心优化它们，为顾客提供更好的产品。你也可以期待我们努力寻找下一个支柱，我们已经有很多候选方案了。正如我们二十年前所承诺的那样，我们将继续大胆押注。在我们面前，机会不断涌现。我们可以透过发明为客户提供更好的服务。我们向你保证，我们将继续努力。

As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, because it’s still Day 1.

如同往常，我把我们在1997年写的致股东信附在文末。我们的价值观依然不变，今天依旧是第一天。

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

杰夫·贝索斯

Amazon创始人暨CEO

我的观点

贝索斯提到理想的商业产品至少有四种特征：

1. 客户喜爱
2. 市场规模很大
3. 够高的资本回报率
4. 增长周期长

你的商业产品如果有上面的任何一种，确实就算一个很好的产品。

贝索斯还提到，到现在亚马逊拥有三个很棒的产品：

1. 第三方卖家平台
2. Prime会员
3. AWS

确实，上面的三个产品其实算是三个方向，每一个方向都有很多的竞争者，亚马逊都算做得做好的。

以前的时候，这三个产品都是比较大胆的赌注，但是成功了。

商业世界是没有不劳而获的轻松事情，要做就做难的事情，然后不断优化。

优化产品的过程，需要做到：

1. 关注顾客，不是关注竞争对手
2. 对发明创新充满激情
3. 对卓越许下承诺
4. 长期思考

亚马逊确实很牛，在上面的三个产品中，卖家平台和Prime，可能会想到。但是AWS确实算是非常有创新的，这也有了云计算，改变了现在的很多行业。

就是不知道，这些产品诞生的过程是怎么样的，为啥亚马逊会下定决心做这样的产品。

第十七封信中英文对照：

To our shareowners:

致我们的股东：

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.”

我为Amazon这一年代表客户所取得的成就感到自豪。世界各地的Amazon员工，正以超出预期和程度，放眼长期，打造更好的产品与服务。重塑标准，让客户惊叹：「哇！」

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?

从Prime服务、Amazon Smile到Mayday，我想带你一个一个认识Amazon的做事方法。希望能让你明白，Amazon正在做什么，以及这些作为反映在服务上会有什么效果。之所以在多项业务上同时开展，是因为在各层级中都有大批优秀人才，每天在工作中运用良好的判断力，并且总是追求：我们如何做得更好？

Ok, let’s get started on the tour.

好，让我们开始吧！

Prime

Prime付费订阅服务

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.

顾客们喜爱Prime服务。仅在12月的第三周，就有超过100万名顾客加入了Prime会员的行列。如今，全球有超过数千万名Prime会员。每名Prime会员都因此购买了更多商品，商品种类横跨了各式各样。我们经常会忘记，Prime服务只是个9年前提出的新概念，这个概念未经证实，甚至被认为是莽撞的点子：只要固定费用，就能享有运费吃到饱且2天内可收件的服务。当时，Amazon上有100万件可用于Prime服务的商品。今年，我们增加了2000万可用于Prime服务的新商品，而且我们会持续增加新品。我们还透过其他方式让Prime服务变得更好，让服务涵盖很多数字内容－包含Kindle Owners’ Lending Library和Prime Instant Video。还没完呢！我们还有很多点子！

Readers & Authors

读者与作者

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!

我们已大力投资于读者服务。全新推出的高分辨率、高对比度度的Kindle Paperwhite获得好评。我们将图书分享网站Goodreads整合至Kindle，为Kindle加上FreeTime服务，并在印度、墨西哥、澳洲推出Kindle。美国联邦航空总署批准在起飞和降落期间使用电子设备。我们的公共政策团队，在很多盟友的帮助下，为此努力工作四年才获得此批准。在一次试验中，我们在飞机上安装了150台Kindle，完全不影响飞航安全！

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.

新服务Kindle Worlds结合了CreateSpace、Kindle Singles和Kindle自助出版，开始了我们在出版产业的Day One。我们在英国和德国开始了Amazon Publishing的业务，已经有了八间出版公司加入我们。成千上万名作者使用这些服务，建立充实的写作生涯。许多人写信告诉我们，Amazon如何帮助他们赚钱送孩子上大学、还清医疗费或购买房产。我们是阅读的传教士，书籍启发并鼓励我们不断往前。

Prime Instant Video

Amazon Prime影音

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. Garry 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.

在所有指标上，Prime Instant Video都经历了巨幅增长，包括新客户数、重复使用率和总流量。这些指标告诉我们，我们正走在一条正确的路。这些指标中，最关键的是品项的增长。2011年推出Amazon Prime影音时，当时品项只有5000种，而我们现已增加至40000种电影和影集－全都包含在你的Prime会员资格里。Amazon Prime影音涵盖数百个独家节目，包括《Downton Abbey》、收视率最高的《Under the Dome》、《The Americans》、《Justified》、《Grimm》、《Orphan Black》、《Suits》、儿童节目《SpongeBob SquarePants》、《Dora the Explorer》和《Blue’s Clues》。此外，Amazon Studio团队持续投资于原创内容。Garry Trudeau创作的《Alpha House》，由John Goodman主演，去年在Amazon平台亮相之后，迅速成为Amazon最受欢迎的节目。我们最近新增了六部原创内容，包括Michael Connelly的《Bosch》、Chris Carter的《The After》、Roman Coppola和Jason Schwartzman的《Mozart in the Jungle》、Jill Soloway的《Transparent》，其中多部被誉为近年来最佳试播节目。我们喜欢这样的做法，近期也在英国和德国试图复制这样的做法。早期客户的反应很好，超出了我们的预期。

Fire TV

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.

就在过去一周里，经过两年的努力，我们的硬件团队推出Fire TV。Fire TV不仅是观看Amazon视频服务的最佳工具，也能兼容Netflix、Hulu Plus、VEVO和WatchESPN。Fire TV的硬件规格较具份量，有别于该类型常见的轻量设备。它的播放能力很强，播放速度快又流畅。我们的「越快越好」技术能够预测你想看的内容，并提前做好播放缓冲，让你可以一切到节目就能立即播放。我们团队把一个小型麦克风放在遥控器里，按着遥控器底下的麦克风按钮，你就可以用语音搜寻节目。这个团队做得很好－语音搜寻确实可行。

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.

除了Prime Instant Video，Fire TV还让你可以随时取得超过20万部电影和影集，包括最新电影《Gravity》、《12 Years a Slave》、《Dallas Buyers Club》、《Frozen》等。另外，Fire TV还有一项加分项－可播放高质量的平价游戏。我们希望你试试看，使用后请告诉我们你的想法。我们团队乐于听见你们的声音。

Amazon Game Studios

Amazon游戏工作室

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.

在21世纪初，地球受到外来物种Ne’ ahtu威胁，他们用计算器病毒瘫痪地球的防御体系，感染了地球的能源网络。在他们要进行致命一击时，计算器科学天才Amy Ramanujan解决了计算器病毒，拯救了地球。现在，Ne’ ahtu即将再次造访地球，Ramanujan博士必须阻止他们对地球发起全面进攻。Ramanujan需要你的帮助。

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.

以上就是Amazon游戏工作室的第一款Fire TV游戏《Sev Zero》的开头。团队结合了塔防游戏和射击游戏，并创造出一种合作模式，由一名玩家开始操控游戏手柄，并由另一名玩家透过平板计算机提供空中支持。我可以向你保证，你会在某些紧张刺激的时刻，见到适时的空袭帮助。当你见到它时，相信你会惊讶于平价设备的游戏展示能力。《Sev Zero》只是我们为Fire平板和Fire TV打造的第一款游戏，我们将会再接再厉，持续推出一系列精美的游戏。

Amazon Appstore

Amazon应用商店

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.

Amazon应用商店为近200国家的客户提供服务。提供的App持续增加，包括来自全球顶级开发者的20万种App及游戏－过去一年中规模增长2倍。我们推出虚拟货币Amazon Coins，可为客户节省多达10%的App费用。我们的Whispersync for Games技术可以让你在一台设备开始玩游戏，然后在另一台接续游戏进度。开发者还可以参与Mobile Associates计划，在App内分销Amazon的商品，赚取推荐费。我们推出Appstore Developer Select营销计划，在Kindle Fire和Amazon的移动广告网络上推广新的App和游戏。我们推出Analytics分析服务和A/B测试服务，这些免费服务可以帮助开发者追踪用户数据，并优化他们的iOS、Android和Fire应用。今年，我们开始服务HTML5网页应用开发者，他们现在也可以把App上架于Kindle Fire和Amazon应用商店。

Spoken Word Audio

有声书语音服务

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.

Audible是世界最大的有声书品牌，业务包含生产有声书和销售有声书。对于Audible来说，2013年是一个具有里程碑意义的一年。当你的眼睛忙于其他事情时，Audible可以为你朗读。数百万用户透过Audible下载数亿本有声书和其他语音节目。2013年，Audible用户共下载了超过6亿小时的播放内容。多亏了Audible Studios，人们可以在通勤路上收听Kate Winslet、Colin Firth、Anne Hathaway等一众明星的节目。Jake Gyllenhaal的《The Great Gatsby》大受欢迎，一共售出超过10万次。Whispersync for Voice技术让用户可以在Kindle阅读与Audible朗读之间无缝切换，《The Wall Street》将此技术称为「Amazon的杀手级应用」。若你还没尝试过，我建议你可以试看看－不仅有趣，而且还可以拓展你的阅读时间。

Fresh Grocery

生鲜杂货

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.

在西雅图开展生鲜杂货业务五年之后（没人指责我们缺乏耐心），我们将Amazon生鲜服务拓展至洛杉矶和旧金山。Prime Fresh会员一年只要付299美元，就能享受当天送达的新鲜食品杂货，品项超过50万种，从玩具、电子产品到家庭用品应有尽有。我们还与当地最受欢迎的卖家合作（比佛利山庄的奶酪店、帕克鱼市场、旧金山葡萄酒贸易公司），以最便捷的方式送货上门，提供各式现成的食品与特色菜肴。我们会持续评估并完善Amazon生鲜业务－目标是让这个不可思议的服务拓展至更多城市。

Amazon Web Services

AWS云端运算服务

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.

AWS推出至今已经有八年历史，而我们团队的创新步伐仍在加速。2010年，我们推出了61种重要服务。2011年，服务数从61种增加为82种。2012年，服务数增加为159种。2013年，服务数扩增为280种。我们还在扩大服务范围，目前我们在全球有10个服务区域，包括美国东海岸、美国西海岸、欧洲、新加坡、东京、悉尼、巴西、中国，以及一个名为GovCloud的政府专用区域。我们的内容分发网络有26个可用区域，其中包含51个边陲位置。开发部门直接与客户合作，拥有直接调整设计并发布的权力。我们会持续迭代，当新功能就绪时，我们就会提供给所有客户。这样以客户为中心的做法，快速且高效－使我们在过去8年中降价超过40次，而且没有放慢速度的迹象。

Employee Empowerment

员工授权

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.

我们挑战自我，不只是为了向外证明什么，也是为了帮助自己把事做好－既可以使我们更有效，也可以惠及全球成千上万的员工。

Career Choice is a program where we pre-pay 95% of tuition for our employees to take courses for indemand 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.

「职业选择（Career Choice）」是一个Amazon员工的培训计划。由公司预付95%学费，提供员工选修飞机修护或护理等技能的机会，技能不需要和工作直接相关。这项计划是为了提供选择。在Amazon配送中心工作的员工之中，有些人把这份工作当成他的职业；有些人则把这份工作当成另一份工作的垫脚石。他们未来的工作可能需要新技能，如果职业训练能帮助他们，我们很乐意这么做。

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.

「给钱走人（Pay to Quit）」是另一项计划。这样的做法起源于Zappos，而我们Amazon配送中心持续优化此做法。给钱走人计划非常简单，Amazon每年会提供一次机会让员工拿钱走人。第一年给1000美元，第二年给2000美元，直到达到5000美元。此计划的信件标题为「请不要接受此提案」，我们希望员工留在Amazon。那为什么我们要提供这项计划？我们的目的是希望人们花时间思考自己真正想要的东西是什么。长期来看，对公司或员工来说，留在自己不想去的地方都不是一件健康的事。

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.

第三项内部创新是我们的虚拟客服中心。我们几年前有了这个点子，并持续开展做法，取得了令人瞩目的成果。根据该计划，员工在家中工作时，可以为Amazon和Kindle用户提供客服支持。对于因为小孩或其他原因而无法离开家的员工来说，这种灵活性是理想的选择。虚拟客服中心是我们在美国增长最快的「站点」，目前已在十多个州运营。我们希望在2014年，将站点数持续扩大一倍。

Veteran Hiring

退伍军人招聘

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.

我们寻求领导人者的条件是：创新、富有远见、具备以客户为中心的价值观。若你在军队里服役过，你可能对这样的要求很熟悉。我们发现，在Amazon的快节奏工作中，领导团队是很珍贵的经验。Amazon是Joining Forces和100,000 Jobs Mission的成员，这两个组织旨在鼓励企业提供员工与其家庭成员工作机会和支持。去年，我们的军事人才团队参加了50多次招募活动，以帮助退伍军人在Amazon里找到适合的工作机会。2013年，我们雇用了超过1900位退伍军人。一旦退伍军人加入Amazon的行列，我们将提供一些计划，帮助他们从军人身分过渡为民用劳动力，并将新进者加入我们的退伍军人网络，给予指导与支持。这些计划给我们带来美誉，《G.I. Jobs Magazine》、《U.S. Veterans Magazine》和《Military Spouse Magazine》给予Amazon最佳雇主的认可。在持续增长的同时，我们会持续投入于退伍军人招聘。

Fulfillment Innovation

配送创新

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.

19年前，每天晚上我都要开着车，到邮局寄送Amazon包裹。我当时想，要是能买台堆高机就好了。时间快进到今天，我们拥有96个配送中心，而且配送中心已迭代至第7版。我们的运营团队十分杰出、做事有条理且独具创意。透过我们的Kaizen计划（Kaizen的意思是日语的「为了更好而改变」），员工编列成小团队来简化流程，以降低资源的浪费。在环境层面，Kaizen计划设定了减少能源消耗、回收利用和其他环保目标。2013年，Kaizen计划数量总计超过1100个，一共超过4700名员工加入其中。

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 http://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.

先进成熟的软件设施，是配送与运营（Fulfillment & Operations）的关键。今年，我们在配送与运营方面推出了280项重大软件更新。我们的目标是持续迭代配送中心的设计、布局、技术和运营，确保每个新设施都比上一个更好。我邀请你自己来看看。我们向六岁以上的大众提供公开的配送中心导览，你可以在http://www.amazon.com/fctours查看相关信息。我自己每次参观配送中心时，总会一遍又一遍地感到惊喜。我希望你能够安排一趟导览，相信你也会印象深刻。

Urban Campus

都市园区

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, pollutionfree, 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.

2013年，我们在西雅图增加了42万平方英尺的新总部空间，这里会成为四个城市街区和数百万平方英尺的新总部建筑。事实上，我们大可选择在郊区建立新总部，这样比较省钱。然而，对我们来说，总部设在城市里是一件很重要的事。都市的园区绿化做的比较好。我们的员工能够运用既有的大众运输工具，减少自行开车的需求。我们大力投资于单车路线建设，提供安全、低污染、简易的通勤方式。许多员工住在公司附近，他们可以直接走路上班。虽然我没办法直接证明，但我相信位于都市的总部，可以帮助Amazon保持活动，吸引更多人才，并保持员工健康。对于Amazon或西雅图这座城市来说，都是好事。

Fast Delivery

快速送货

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.

我们与美国邮政署（United States Postal Service）合作，开始向部分城市提供周日送货服务。周日送货服务，对于Amazon的消费者来说是一件好事。我们计划在2014年在更多城市开展这项服务。在英国，由于服务商无法支持我们的需求，我们已经创造自家的最后一哩路送货网络。在印度和中国，由于配送基础设施尚未成熟，你会看到Amazon送货员骑着单车在大城市中穿梭。这就是创新的起源。Prime Air团队正计划着第5代和第6代的飞行器试飞，第7代和第8代飞行器也正在设计中。

Experiments and More Experiments

试验测试与更多的试验

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.

我们拥有自己的内部测试平台－Weblab。我们使用Weblab来测试我们的网站和产品。2011年我们在全球进行546次测试，2012年进行1092次测试，2013年进行1976次测试。我们近期的成功是一项新功能「问卖家（Ask an owner）。这是多年前我们提出的想法，让消费者可以在线评论、分享意见，帮助其他消费者做出更好的购买决策。从产品页面，消费者可以提出关于产品的任何问题。产品是否和我的电视／音响／计算机兼容？是不是容易组装？电池耗电状况快不快？我们会把问题的答案分享给其他消费者。与评论的反响一样，消费者很乐于分享知识，直接其他人进行购买决策。现在，问题和答复已经超过数百万个。

Apparel and Shoes

服装与鞋子

Amazon Fashion is booming. Premium brands are recognizing that they can use Amazon to reach fashionconscious, 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.

Amazon Fashion正在蓬勃发展。高端品牌已经意识到，他们可以运用Amazon来触达重视时尚的客群。消费者也很喜欢这些品牌、免费退货服务和详尽的商品照片与视频，使他们能够清晰地看到模特走路和转身时的实际样子。我们在布鲁克林设立了一个40000平方英尺的照相馆，每天平均拍摄10413张照片。为了庆祝开幕，我们与来自Pratt、Parsons、School of Visual Arts和Fashion Institute of Technology的学生一起举办一场设计竞赛，由业内人士进行评判，其中包括Steven Kolb、Eva Chen、Derek Lam、Tracy Reese和 Steven Alan。在此向夺得最高荣誉的Parsons致上敬意。

Frustration-Free Packaging

Frustration-Free包装计划

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 FrustrationFree 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.

Amazon与烦人的绑带和塑料包装的斗争越来越激烈。五年前，我们开始了Frustration-Free包装计划。最初的想法很简单，就是让消费者不用冒着受伤的风险打开商品的包装。从电子产品、玩具到目前超过20万种商品，所有商品的包装都是易于开启、可回收的设计，并实现减量帮助地球。在计划中，我们与超过2000间包装耗材制造商合作，包括Fisher-Price、Mattel、Unilever, Belkin、Victorinox Swiss Army、Logitech。透过Frustration-Free包装计划，我们已经向全球175个国家运送了数百万件包裹。迄今为止，我们为消费者减少了3300万磅多余耗材。此计划是我们以客户为中心的典范。经过艰苦奋斗，这个计划涵盖的范围，从起初的19项商品增加至成千上万种，使数百万客户受益。

Fulfillment by Amazon

Amazon配送服务

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 http://Amazon.com more than 20% after joining FBA. It’s a win-win.

去年，使用Amazon配送的卖家数量增长超过65%。如此大规模的增长是很罕见的。Amazon配送服务在很多方面都是独一无二的。通常来说，你很难用一项服务满足两群客户。有了Amazon配送，卖家可以将商品寄存在我们的配送中心，由我们来进行捡货、包装和运送和客户服务。受益于世界最先进的配送网络，卖家可以轻松拓展业务，服务数百万客户。Prime会员可以享受到两天内到货的免费送货服务，因此他们更可能会购买更多第三方卖家的商品。毫不意外，卖家发现他们加入Amazon配送后销量提升。在2013年的一项调查之中，近四分之三的受访者表示，在加入Amazon配送之后，他们的单位销量提升了20%。这是一个双赢结果。

“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

「Amazon配送可以说是我的最佳员工。一天早晨我醒来时，意识到亚马逊物流已经运送了50批商品。我一想到自己可以在睡觉时同时销售商品，一切就容易多了。」Action Sports有限公司的Thanny Schuck如此说道。

“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

「起始于一个不知名的品牌，我们很难找到愿意库存我们商品的零售商，除了Amazon。Amazon吸引人的地方，当有人说：『我想创业』，他们可以在Amazon上开展业务。你不必先租用建筑物，也不必先雇用任何员工，你可以来。这正是我所做的。」YogaRat的Wendell Morris如此说道。

Login and Pay with Amazon

使用Amazon登入与付费

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.

多年来，我们拓展Amazon的服务，使我们的用户可以把帐户中绑定的信用卡用于其他网站上购买商品，并寄送到绑定的收件地址。这些网站包括Kickstarter、SmugMug和Gogo Inflight。今年，我们扩展此项服务，除了使用Amazon账户中的信用卡付费，用户还可以使用Amazon帐户直接登入其他网站。如此一来，用户无须记得另一个账号和密码，免去繁琐的注册流程。这对消费者和商家都很方便，在线家具零售商Cymax Stores便透过这项服务取得巨大的成功。在前三个月内，使用Amazon登入付费的用户建立了20%的订单，产生了三倍的新注册账户，提升了3.15%的转换率。这个例子并不罕见，我们看到很多合作伙伴取得相似的成绩，我们的团队对此大受鼓舞。2014年，相信会有更好的表现。

Amazon Smile

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 http://smile.amazon.com as you do on http://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.

2013年，我们推出了Amazon Smile，让消费者可以在买东西时，也能轻松地支持喜欢的慈善团体。当你在http://smile.amazon.com购买商品时，Amazon就会将购买价格的一部份金额捐给你选择的慈善团体。你在http://smile.amazon.com会看到和Amazon一模一样的品项、价格、寄送方式、Prime服务、购物车和愿望清单。除了大型的全国性慈善团体，你也可以捐给当地儿童医院、学校的家长教师联谊会或任何你想要捐助的慈善团体。有将近100万个选择，我希望你能从中找到你喜欢的慈善团体。

The Mayday Button

Kindle上的Mayday求助按纽

“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.”

「Kindle不仅是个很棒的设备，它的Mayday求助按钮更是棒！Kindle团队极为杰出！」

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

「我只是在我的Kindle Fire上尝试按了Mayday求助按钮，15秒后就得到响应。Amazon团队再次做到令人惊艳的事。」

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.

在Amazon，没有什么事情比「重塑常态」带给我们更多的快乐－创造客户喜爱的东西，提高他们的预期。Mayday求助按钮重构了电子产品的客服支持，带给用户新的想象。按下Mayday按钮，一名Amazon专家会出现在你的Kindle Fire上，他可以指导你操作装置，也可以直接帮你远程操作。Mayday求助按钮一年365天，每天24小时全年无休为你服务。我们的目标是响应时间在15秒以内。我们达成目标－就算是最忙碌的圣诞节，平均响应时间也在9秒内。

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.

有些Mayday的案例很有意思。Mayday技术顾问收到35个结婚协议。475名消费者想要跟我们的电视虚拟人物Amy对话。有109个案例是要帮忙订比萨，而其中比较多人想要订的是必胜客而不是达美乐哦！有44个案例是请Mayday技术顾问和消费者一起唱生日快乐歌。Mayday技术顾问为消费者唱了648次小夜曲。3名客户想要听睡前故事。这些案例十分有趣。

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.

我希望你对我们想把握的机会有所理解，同时重新认识被低估的创新与追求卓越的驱动力。我应该再次强调，上述提及的只是一小部分，还有很多计划没在这封信提到。那些未被提及的计划，一样也很卓越、显著与有趣。

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.

我们很幸运的拥有一支庞大、富创造力的团队，成员们都具备耐心、勇于探索和认同客户至上的文化。无论大小，对于客户有益的创新，每天都在发生。创新发生在各个角落，不限于公司的资深领导层。这让我们能够取得大量的创新成果。我们正在做的事情，充满挑战，但也很有趣。无论过去、现在还是未来，我们都会继续保持这样的工作方式。

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.

失败和发明相伴相生。这不是可以避免的，我们对此有清楚认知，而且坚信在快速失败、快速迭代的方式能使我们最终获得成功。当我们这么做时，我们的失败相对来说很小（所有尝试都从小规模开始）。当我们找到可行的做法，我们就会加倍努力把它做好，使它能够真正帮上客户的忙。然而，它并不总是如此清晰，创新总是艰难。我们很清楚，我们终究会在某些大赌注上失败。

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.

最后，我希望大家记住前Amazon首席财务官Joy Covey，她为Amazon留下不可抹灭的印记。Joy非常杰出，做事认真，为人也很有趣。她经常笑脸迎人，眼睛大大的，什么事都逃不过她的眼睛。她是一名光学专家，也是善于长期思考的人。她的胆子很大。她为资深团队以及全公司留下深远的影响。一部分的她会永远留在Amazon，确保我们关注细节，了解我们周遭的世界，让一切充满乐趣。

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.

身为Amazon团队的一份子，我感到十分幸运。如同往常，我把我们在1997年写的致股东信附在文末。我们的价值观依然不变，今天依旧是Day 1。

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

April 2014

杰夫·贝索斯

Amazon创始人暨CEO

2014年4月

我的观点

这封信有点长，有21个案例来介绍亚马逊取得的成果。

确实，客户案例是一个非常重要的宣传手段，也是证明你公司价值的东西。双赢才能走得长远。

案例有：

1. Prime付费订阅服务
2. 读者与作者
3. Amazon Prime影音
4. Fire TV
5. Amazon游戏工作室
6. Amazon应用商店
7. 有声书语音服务
8. 生鲜杂货
9. AWS云端运算服务
10. 员工授权
11. 退伍军人招聘
12. 配送创新
13. 都市园区
14. 快速送货
15. 试验测试与更多的试验
16. 服装与鞋子
17. Frustration-Free包装计划
18. Amazon配送服务
19. 使用Amazon登入与付费
20. Amazon Smile
21. Kindle上的Mayday求助按纽

这21个案例，有产品发，也有招聘，也有公司新闻，还有一些社会关怀等等。这其实也证明，现在的亚马逊已经非常大了。

第十六封信中英文对照：

To our shareowners:

致我们的股东：

As regular readers of this letter will know, our energy at Amazon comes from the desire to impress customers rather than the zeal to best competitors. We don’t take a view on which of these approaches is more likely to maximize business success. There are pros and cons to both and many examples of highly successful competitor-focused companies. We do work to pay attention to competitors and be inspired by them, but it is a fact that the customer-centric way is at this point a defining element of our culture.

若你常看我们的致股东信，你会知道Amazon的动力来源是－想要打动用户的渴望，而非击败竞争者的心态。我们不会花时间去研究如何能够最大化商业上的成功。那些成功的竞争导向企业，本身存在着不少利弊。我们不会花心思在如何击败竞争者，我们只会从竞争者身上汲取灵感。以客户为中心的价值观，已经深植于我们的文化之中。

One advantage – perhaps a somewhat subtle one – of a customer-driven focus is that it aids a certain type of proactivity. When we’re at our best, we don’t wait for external pressures. We are internally driven to improve our services, adding benefits and features, before we have to. We lower prices and increase value for customers before we have to. We invent before we have to. These investments are motivated by customer focus rather than by reaction to competition. We think this approach earns more trust with customers and drives rapid improvements in customer experience – importantly – even in those areas where we are already the leader.

以客户为中心的其中一项优势（或许是最微妙的优势）是「主动性」。在还没有外部压力、还没有确切的截止期限的情况下，我们也能持续改进服务、增加服务和功能。虽然非必要，但我们会降低价格，为客户增加价值。我们会先于一件事成为必要之前，就进行发明创造。这些动力不来自竞争关系，而是来自于客户导向。我们认为，这种方法能够赢得客户的信任，并且快速改善客户体验。最重要的是，即使我们已经是所在领域的领先者，我们依然能够不断进步。

“Thank you. Every time I see that white paper on the front page of Amazon, I know that I’m about to get more for my money than I thought I would. I signed up for Prime for the shipping, yet now I get movies, and TV and books. You keep adding more, but not charging more. So thanks again for the additions.” We now have more than 15 million items in Prime, up 15x since we launched in 2005. Prime Instant Video selection tripled in just over a year to more than 38,000 movies and TV episodes. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has also more than tripled to over 300,000 books, including an investment of millions of dollars to make the entire Harry Potter series available as part of that selection. We didn’t “have to” make these improvements in Prime. We did so proactively. A related investment – a major, multi-year one – is Fulfillment by Amazon. FBA gives third-party sellers the option of warehousing their inventory alongside ours in our fulfillment center network. It has been a game changer for our seller customers because their items become eligible for Prime benefits, which drives their sales, while at the same time benefitting consumers with additional Prime selection.

「谢谢你们！当我在Amazon首页看到白皮书时，我就知道我的钱将更有价值。出于运费考虑，我注册成为Prime会员，而现在我可以用它来看电影、看电视和看书。你们持续增加更多价值，但没有收取更高昂的费用。感谢你们的持续进步，为客户带来许多价值。」现在，我们的Prime服务涵盖超过1500万种商品，比2005年推出服务时增加了15倍。在一年多的时间里，亚马逊Prime影音（Amazon Prime Video）的选择增加为3倍，一共有3万8千部电影和电视影集。Kindle Owners’ Lending Library的书籍量增加超过2倍，超过30万册书籍，其中包括我们投入上百万美元购买的《哈利波特》系列。这些改进并非「必要」，但我们很积极地在做这些事情。另一项「非必要」的重要投资是Amazon配送服务。Amazon配送服务为第三方卖家提供我们的仓储空间和配送网络。对我们的第三方卖家来说，这大大改变了游戏规则，因为他们的商品可以搭配Prime服务，消费者因此可享受运费优惠，从而提升商品的销售量。同时，Prime服务也因此扩大了商品类别。

We build automated systems that look for occasions when we’ve provided a customer experience that isn’t up to our standards, and those systems then proactively refund customers. One industry observer recently received an automated email from us that said, “We noticed that you experienced poor video playback while watching the following rental on Amazon Video On Demand: Casablanca. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and have issued you a refund for the following amount: $2.99. We hope to see you again soon.” Surprised by the proactive refund, he ended up writing about the experience: “Amazon ‘noticed that I experienced poor video playback…’ And they decided to give me a refund because of that? Wow…Talk about putting customers first.”

我们建立了自动化系统，以找出不符合客户体验标准的情况，这样的自动化系统会主动退款给客户。有一名行业观察家近期收到一封系统信件，内容如下：「最近，我们注意到你在Amazon Video On Demand上观看《Casablanca》时遇到视频播放不良的问题。我们为此感到很抱歉，已将2.99美元退款至你的账户。我们希望能在短期内再见到你。」主动退款让他很惊讶，他对这样的体验写了以下评论：「Amazon注意到我遇到视频播放问题，因此他们就这样决定退款给我？哇…… 把客户放在第一位。」

When you pre-order something from Amazon, we guarantee you the lowest price offered by us between your order time and the end of the day of the release date. “I just received notice of a $5 refund to my credit card for pre-order price protection. . . What a great way to do business! Thank you very much for your fair and honest dealings.” Most customers are too busy themselves to monitor the price of an item after they pre-order it, and our policy could be to require the customer to contact us and ask for the refund. Doing it proactively is more expensive for us, but it also surprises, delights, and earns trust.

当你从Amazon订购商品后，你就会享有我们的最低价格保证机制，我们保证你购买到的价格是订购时间到发货时间期间的最低价格。「我刚收到退款5美元的通知，退款原因是返还价差，实现最低价格保证。非常好的客户体验！感谢你们的公正诚实的交易机制。」多数客户的生活都很忙碌，他们没有时间随时查看价格变化，因此我们可以要求客户自行买贵退差价，但我们没有这么做。我们采取主动退款的方式，对我们来说需要花费更高的成本，但这可以让客户惊艳，并赢得客户的信任。

We also have authors as customers. Amazon Publishing has just announced it will start paying authors their royalties monthly, sixty days in arrears. The industry standard is twice a year, and that has been the standard for a long time. Yet when we interview authors as customers, infrequent payment is a major dissatisfier. Imagine how you’d like it if you were paid twice a year. There isn’t competitive pressure to pay authors more than once every six months, but we’re proactively doing so. By the way – though the research was taxing, I struggled through and am happy to report that I recently saw many Kindles in use at a Florida beach. There are five generations of Kindle, and I believe I saw every generation in use except for the first. Our business approach is to sell premium hardware at roughly breakeven prices. We want to make money when people use our devices – not when people buy our devices. We think this aligns us better with customers. For example, we don’t need our customers to be on the upgrade treadmill. We can be very happy to see people still using four-year-old Kindles!

我们的客户也包括作家。Amazon自助出版刚宣布新政策：每个月都向作家支付版税，版税拖欠不超过60天。出版业施行已久的行业标准是每年支付版税两次。当我们访问这些作家时，经常被诟病的问题就是版税支付频率低。想象一下，如果你每年只会收到两次薪水会造成什么问题。我们的确没有必要提升支付频率，我们可以仿效行业标准，每年支付版税两次，但我们没有。顺带一提，我最近在佛罗里达海滩上看到不少人在使用Kindle。Kindle目前有五代，而我看到人们在使用第二代到第五代。我们的业务方针是「以打平支出的方式卖出硬件」。我们不在售出设备时就赚钱，而是在用户使用设备时才赚钱。我们认为这样的方式，可以使我们和客户的利益保持一致。打个比方，靠用户使用设备才赚钱的我们，不需要仰赖用户不断购买新装置，不断升级硬件。对于用户仍在使用一台高龄四岁的Kindle，我们感到很高兴。

I can keep going – Kindle Fire’s FreeTime, our customer service Andon Cord, Amazon MP3’s AutoRip – but will finish up with a very clear example of internally driven motivation: Amazon Web Services. In 2012, AWS announced 159 new features and services. We’ve reduced AWS prices 27 times since launching 7 years ago, added enterprise service support enhancements, and created innovative tools to help customers be more efficient. AWS Trusted Advisor monitors customer configurations, compares them to known best practices, and then notifies customers where opportunities exist to improve performance, enhance security, or save money. Yes, we are actively telling customers they’re paying us more than they need to. In the last 90 days, customers have saved millions of dollars through Trusted Advisor, and the service is only getting started. All of this progress comes in the context of AWS being the widely recognized leader in its area – a situation where you might worry that external motivation could fail. On the other hand, internal motivation – the drive to get the customer to say “Wow” – keeps the pace of innovation fast.

我还可以继续一个一个介绍Kindle Fire阅读器的内容服务FreeTime、客服工具Andon Cord和音乐服务AutoRip，但我想专注于内部驱动的最显著的例子－AWS。2012年，AWS宣布了159种新功能与服务。自7年前推出以来，我们已经将AWS的费用降低了27倍，增加了企业服务支持，开发了创新工具为客户提升效率。AWS Trusted Advisor监控客户的设定，将设定与已知的最佳作法比对后，提醒客户哪里调整之后可以改善性能、增加安全性及节省成本。你想的没错，我们正积极告诉客户「他们支付给我们的钱太多了，比他们需要付的钱还多。」虽然AWS Trusted Advisor才刚上线，但仅仅在过去90天内，客户就透过AWS Trusted Advisor节省了数百万美元。以上所有改进，其动力都来自于内部，而非外部。这些改进都是在AWS成为该领域的领导者之后才进行的。另一方面，内部动机能促使客户不断对我们的服务感到惊叹，让我们保持快节奏的创新步调。

Our heavy investments in Prime, AWS, Kindle, digital media, and customer experience in general strike some as too generous, shareholder indifferent, or even at odds with being a for-profit company. “Amazon, as far as I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers,” writes one outside observer. But I don’t think so. To me, trying to dole out improvements in a justin-time fashion would be too clever by half. It would be risky in a world as fast-moving as the one we all live in. More fundamentally, I think long-term thinking squares the circle. Proactively delighting customers earns trust, which earns more business from those customers, even in new business arenas. Take a long-term view, and the interests of customers and shareholders align.

我们在Prime、AWS、Kindle、数字媒体和客户体验上的巨额投资，甚至到了过于慷慨的程度。股东对此漠不关心，甚至认为这不是营利性公司应该有的作为。一名外部观察家写到：「据我所知，Amazon是一个由投资界人士运营的慈善组织，旨在为消费者带来益处。」但我不这样认为。我认为，在这个瞬息万变的世界中，试图以「看到什么就实时调整什么」的方式做事，只是一件耍小聪明的事，甚至会有风险。从根本上来说，我认为长期思考可以解决这个问题。主动积极满足客户，可以赢得客户的信任，并带来更多的业务。在新的业务领域，这样的作法依然可行。从长远来看，客户和股东的利益是一致的。

As I write this, our recent stock performance has been positive, but we constantly remind ourselves of an important point – as I frequently quote famed investor Benjamin Graham in our employee all-hands meetings – “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” We don’t celebrate a 10% increase in the stock price like we celebrate excellent customer experience. We aren’t 10% smarter when that happens and conversely aren’t 10% dumber when the stock goes the other way. We want to be weighed, and we’re always working to build a heavier company.

在我撰写本文时，Amazon最近的股价表现良好，但我们还是不断提醒自己，要以著名投资者Benjamin Graham的观点来看待股价：「短期而言，市场是一台投票机器；长期而言，市场是一台秤重机。」我经常在员工全体会议中提到这句话。我们不会像庆祝改进客户体验那样庆祝股价上升10%。当股价上升10%时，我们并不会变聪明10%；当股价下降10%时，我们也不会因此变笨10%。我们希望Amazon是一间被秤重的公司，我们一直在努力打造一间更有份量的公司。

As proud as I am of our progress and our inventions, I know that we will make mistakes along the way – some will be self-inflicted, some will be served up by smart and hard-working competitors. Our passion for pioneering will drive us to explore narrow passages, and, unavoidably, many will turn out to be blind alleys. But – with a bit of good fortune – there will also be a few that open up into broad avenues.

我为我们的进步与发明感到自豪，我明白我们一路走来一定会犯错－有些源自于我们自身，有些则来自于优秀的竞争对手。我们对开拓未来的热诚，将驱使我们踏上困难的路，而且其中有些路是死胡同。幸运的是，其中有些路被证明是康庄大道。

I am incredibly lucky to be a part of this large team of outstanding missionaries who value our customers as much as I do and who demonstrate that every day with their hard work. As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1.

这是一个珍视客户的杰出团队，日复一日，我们对客户至上的热情依旧。身为这个优秀团队的一份子，我感到十分幸运。如同往常，我把我们在1997年写的致股东信附在文末。我们的价值观依然不变，今天依旧是Day 1。

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

April 2013

杰夫·贝索斯

Amazon创始人暨CEO

2013年4月

我的观点

这封信里面，我可以学到几个点。

要主动服务客户，而不是研究竞争对手。确实，要研究竞争对手，但是不要追随竞争对手。很多时候，竞争会把自己带到沟里去，因为你时刻对标的时候，大家都会犯一样的错，而且关注点在对手身上，而不是在客户身上。

主动性。 这个主动性其实就是服务客户的动机，这个动机不是为了得到一个好评这种功利性的，而是发自内心的。 亚马逊还建立一个自动的评价系统，遇到一些不符合客户体验的就自动退款。 这个确实是一个好口碑的方法，还有就是保价机制，也是自动退差价的。

这让我想起，在京东很无语的地方。我买了一个显示器，不到几天就跌了300块，这就需要你自己去看价格是否跌了，然后去售后退款。这和亚马逊发现价格降了主动退款是非常不一样的体验，京东这种就是利用你买了就不会去看价格，还有时效性来达到不退款的目的，这和保证你买到的是最低价没啥关联，没达到效果。

为消费者带来好处，这才是用户导向的价值，主动的去满足客户的需求，而不是坑客户。亚马逊这个确实做得很对。

第十五封信中英文对照：

To our shareowners:

致我们的股东：

The Power of Invention

发明的力量

“To us, the value of Amazon Web Services is undeniable – in twenty seconds, we can double our server capacity. In a high-growth environment like ours and with a small team of developers, it’s very important for us to trust that we have the best support to give to the music community around the world. Five years ago, we would have crashed and been down without knowing when we would be back. Now, because of Amazon’s continued innovation, we can provide the best technology and continue to grow.” That’s Christopher Tholen, the Chief Technology Officer of BandPage. His comments about how AWS helps with the critical need to scale compute capacity quickly and reliably are not hypothetical: BandPage now helps 500,000 bands and artists connect with tens of millions of fans.

「对我们来说，没有人可以否定AWS的高价值。20秒内，我们就能将服务器的容量提高一倍。我们的增长速度极快，且仅有为数不多的开发人员。我们相信Amazon的服务可以提供全世界的音乐社群最好支持。5年前，我们的服务器早就该崩溃倒下。然而，在Amazon的不断创新之下，我们现在可以提供全世界最好的技术，并不断发展。」BandPage的首席技术官Christopher Tholen对此给出以下评论：Amazon提升计算能力的速度之快、技术之稳定并不是空谈，有了AWS的技术支持，BandPage现在可以帮助50万个乐团和艺术家与他们的千万粉丝建立联系。

“So, I started selling on Amazon in April of 2011, and by the time we became the top Amazon lunchbox seller in June, we had between 50 and 75 orders a day. When we hit August and September – our busiest time, with the start of the school year – we had 300, sometimes 500 orders a day. It was just phenomenal… I’m using Amazon to fulfill my orders, which makes my life easier. Plus, when my customers found out they could get free shipping with Prime subscriptions, the lunchboxes began selling like crazy.” Kelly Lester is the “mom entrepreneur” of EasyLunchboxes, her own innovative line of easy-to-pack, environmentally friendly lunchbox containers.

「因此，我在2011年4月开始在Amazon上贩卖商品。当我们在6月成为Amazon最畅销的便当盒卖家时，我们一天能有50到75笔订单。我们最忙碌的月份8月和9月，也就是学校开学的月份，一天能卖出300笔订单，有时甚至能达到500笔。这是十分了不起的……我一直都在使用Amazon的服务来配送商品，这为我的生活减轻许多麻烦。另外，当我的客户发现他们可以用Prime服务买到免运的商品后，订单数开始暴增」EasyLunchboxes的「妈妈企业家」Kelly Lester如此说道。EasyLunchboxes是她自己的创新商品，特色是易于包装且环保。

“I sort of stumbled onto it, and it opened a whole new world for me. Since I had over a thousand [book] titles at my house, I thought, ‘I’ll give this a try.’ I sold some and I kept expanding it and expanding it, and come to find out this was so much fun I decided I don’t ever want to get another job again. And I’ve got no boss – other than my wife, that is. What could be better than that? We actually work together on this. We both go out hunting, so it’s a team effort that’s worked out very well. We sell about 700 books a month. We ship between 800 and 900 to Amazon each month and Amazon ships out the 700 that people buy. Without Amazon handling shipping and customer service, my wife and I would have to be running to the post office or someplace every day with dozens of packages. With that part taken care of for us, life is much simpler… This is a terrific program and I love it. After all, Amazon supplies the customers and even ships the books. I mean, how can it get better than that?” Bob Frank founded RJF Books and More after getting laid off in the midst of the economic downturn. He and his wife split their time between Phoenix and Minneapolis, and he describes finding the books he sells like “a treasure hunt every day.”

「我偶然发现Amazon，结果它为我打开了一个新的世界。由于我家里有上千本书，所以我想试着在Amazon上卖点书。我卖了一些书，然后不断扩张业务。接着，我发现这实在太有趣了，我决定不再寻找其他工作，专职做这项业务。没有老板，而且可以和妻子一起工作，有什么工作比这个工作更好呢？我们为此一起努力，外出寻宝找书，团队合作非常顺利。我们每个月向Amazon寄出800至900本书，可卖出其中约700本书，并由Amazon帮我们处理物流。没有Amazon的物流及客服服务，我和我的妻子需要每天扛着几十个包裹到快递收件中心寄货。有了这些服务，我们的生活变得更加简单。这是相当了不起的服务，我非常喜欢。毕竟，Amazon除了帮助我们销售，还帮我们处理物流，还有什么比这个服务更好？」在经济不景气中被裁员之后，Bob Frank创立了RJF Book。他和妻子花时间在凤凰城和明尼阿波利斯之间寻找书籍，他将这样的过程称之为「每日寻宝」。

“Because of Kindle Direct Publishing, I earn more royalties in one month than I ever did in a year of writing for a traditional house. I have gone from worrying about if I will be able to pay the bills – and there were many months when I couldn’t – to finally having real savings, even thinking about a vacation; something I haven’t done in years… Amazon has allowed me to really spread my wings. Prior, I was boxed into a genre, yet I had all of these other books I wanted to write. Now I can do just that. I manage my career. I feel as if I finally have a partner in Amazon. They understand this business and have changed the face of publishing for the good of the writer and the reader, putting choices back into our hands.” That’s A. K. Alexander, author of Daddy’s Home, one of the top 100 best-selling Kindle books in March.

「由于使用了Kindle自助出版（Kindle Direct Publishing），我在一个月内获得的版税比为传统出版社写作一年还多。过去我经常担心收入是否能支付生活开支，但现在我不用担心了。我开始有了积蓄，甚至考虑给自己放个假，假期可是我好几年想都不敢想的事。Amazon让我能够真正展翅高飞。以前，虽然我想写很多类型的书，但我往往会被出版社定型成特定类型的作家。现在，我可以写各种我想写的类型的书。我管理自己的事业，我感觉自己在Amazon中有合作伙伴。他们了解这项业务，并为作家和读者的利益改变了出版业的面貌，将选择权重新交到我们手上。」 《Daddy’s Home》是三月份最畅销的Kindle电子书之一，它的作者A. K. Alexander如此说道。

“I had no idea that March of 2010, the first month I decided to publish on KDP, would be a defining moment in my life. Within a year of doing so, I was making enough on a monthly basis to quit my day job and focus on writing full time! The rewards that have sprung out of deciding to publish through KDP have been nothing short of life changing. Financially. Personally. Emotionally. Creatively. The ability to write full time, to be home with my family, and to write exactly what I want without the input of a legacy publisher marketing committee wanting to have a say in every detail of my writing, has made me a stronger writer, a more prolific writer, and most importantly a far happier one…. Amazon and KDP are literally enabling creativity in the publishing world and giving writers like me a shot at their dream, and for that I am forever grateful.” That’s Blake Crouch, author of several thrillers, including the Kindle best seller Run.

「2010年3月，也是我使用Kindle自助出版的第一年，我当时并不知道，这将成为我生活的决定性时刻。在不到一年的时间里，我每个月都能够赚到足够的钱，让我能够辞掉工作，全职投入写作！使用Kindle自助出版服务的这个决定，大大的改变了我的生活，无论是从财务层面、个人层面、情感层面还是创意层面。能够全职写作、和家人更多的相处时间、没有传统出版商对细节的控制、写我想写的内容，这些使我成为一个更优秀、更多产、更快乐的作家。Amazon自助出版服务确实使出版界更能发挥创造力，并为像我这样的作家提供了实现梦想的机会，对此我非常感激。」Kindle畅销电子书《Run》及多本惊悚小说的作者Blake Crouch如此说道。

“Amazon has made it possible for authors like me to get their work in front of readers and has changed my life. In a little over a year, I have sold nearly 250,000 books through the Kindle and have traded in old dreams for bigger and better ones. Four of my books have hit the Top 100 Kindle Best Sellers List. Also, I have been approached by agents, foreign sales people, and two movie producers, and have received mentions in the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and PC Magazine, and was recently interviewed by USA Today. Mostly, I am excited that all writers now have the opportunity to get their work in front of readers without jumping through insurmountable hoops. Writers have more options and readers have more choices. The publishing world is changing fast, and I plan to enjoy every minute of the ride.” Theresa Ragan is the KDP author of multiple Kindle best sellers including Abducted.

「Amazon让我这样的作家有机会在读者面前展示作品，改变了我的生活。在一年多的时间内，我透过Kindle售出近25万本书，用旧的梦想交换更大的新梦想。我有四本书进入Kindle畅销排行榜100名，代理商、国外销售人员和两个电影制片人和我联系合作事宜，《LA Times》、《Wall Street Journal》和《PC Magazine》对我进行介绍，而我最近还接受了《USA Today》的采访。让我感到兴奋的是，此时此刻任何作家都有机会在读者面前展示自己的作品。作家有了更多选择，读者也是。出版界瞬息万变，我享受每一分钟的旅程。」《Abducted》等多本Kindle畅销书作者Theresa Ragan如此说道。

“Past age 60 and in the midst of the recession, my wife and I found our income options severely limited. KDP was my one shot at a lifelong dream – our only chance at financial salvation. Within months of publishing, KDP has completely changed our lives, enabling this aging nonfiction writer to launch a brand-new career as a best-selling novelist. I can’t say enough on behalf of Amazon and the many tools that they make available to independent authors. Without reservation, I urge fellow writers to investigate and seize the opportunities that KDP offers. As I’ve happily discovered, there is zero downside risk – and the potential is virtually unlimited.” Robert Bidinotto is the author of the Kindle best seller Hunter: A Thriller.

「在经济衰退期间，我和我的妻子发现自己的收入来源选项很有限，此时我们已经60岁了。Kindle自助出版是我对毕生梦想的一次尝试－我们仅有的财务机遇。出版后几个月内，Kindle自助出版大大改变了我的生活，使一名年迈的非小说家，可以用新的身分－畅销小说作者重新开始。我并不能充分代表Amazon，他们为独立工作者提供很多工具。我毫无保留地鼓励其他作家研究Kindel自助出版，好好保握Amazon提供的机遇。我很高兴地发现，风险为零而潜力几乎无限。」Kindle畅销书《Hunter: A Triller》的作者Robert Bidinotto如此说道。

“I leveraged KDP’s technology to blow through all the traditional gatekeepers. Can you imagine how that feels, after struggling so hard, for so long, for every … single … reader? Now, inspirational fiction lovers I never would have reached are enjoying Nobody and my other two novels from the Kindle Store at $2.99. I’ve always wanted to write a Cinderella story. Now I have. And, thanks to Prince Charming (KDP), there will be more to come…” Creston Mapes is the author of the Kindle best seller Nobody.

「我利用Kindle自助出版，突破了所有传统出版业的桎梏。你能想象那种十分坚持才能得到一个又一个读者的感受吗？现在，我从未接触过的读者，正以2.99美元享受我所创作的小说。我一直希望能够写个像《灰姑娘》的故事，现在我实现了。感谢我的白马王子－Kindle自助出版，将来还会有更多好故事。」Kindle畅销书《Nobody》作者Creston Mapes如此说道。

Invention comes in many forms and at many scales. The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity – to pursue their dreams. That’s a big part of what’s going on with Amazon Web Services, Fulfillment by Amazon, and Kindle Direct Publishing. With AWS, FBA, and KDP, we are creating powerful self-service platforms that allow thousands of people to boldly experiment and accomplish things that would otherwise be impossible or impractical. These innovative, large-scale platforms are not zero-sum – they create win-win situations and create significant value for developers, entrepreneurs, customers, authors, and readers.

发明总是以多种形式、不同规模出现。其中，最激进且最具变革性的莫过于那些鼓励他人释放创造力、追求梦想的发明。AWS、Amazon物流和Kindle自助出版正是这样的发明。有了他们，我们正在创建一个强大的自助平台，让上千上万的人们可以大胆尝试，并完成原本不可能的事情。这些创新的大规模平台所开创的并非是一方有所得，他方必有所失的零和游戏，而是双赢局面，为开发者、企业家、消费者、作家和读者产生巨大价值。

Amazon Web Services has grown to have thirty different services and thousands of large and small businesses and individual developers as customers. One of the first AWS offerings, the Simple Storage Service, or S3, now holds over 900 billion data objects, with more than a billion new objects being added every day. S3 routinely handles more than 500,000 transactions per second and has peaked at close to a million transactions per second. All AWS services are pay-as-you-go and radically transform capital expense into a variable cost. AWS is self-service: you don’t need to negotiate a contract or engage with a salesperson – you can just read the online documentation and get started. AWS services are elastic – they easily scale up and easily scale down.

AWS已经发展成30种不同服务，客户包括成千上万个大小企业及个人开发者。AWS的首批产品之一，Simple Storage Service目前有超过9000亿个数据对象，每天还会增加超过10亿个数据对象。一般来说，Simple Storage Service每秒处理超过50万笔交易，峰值可达100万笔交易。所有AWS服务都是「随收随付制（pay-as-you-go）」，用多少才收多少，客户因此可以将固定的服务器支出，转为可变动成本。AWS是自助服务：你不需要和销售人员签订合约，只需要阅读在线文件之后，就可以开始使用。AWS服务有很大的弹性，可以轻松调整使用容量。

In just the last quarter of 2011, Fulfillment by Amazon shipped tens of millions of items on behalf of sellers. When sellers use FBA, their items become eligible for Amazon Prime, for Super Saver Shipping, and for Amazon returns processing and customer service. FBA is self-service and comes with an easy-to-use inventory management console as part of Amazon Seller Central. For the more technically inclined, it also comes with a set of APIs so that you can use our global fulfillment center network like a giant computer peripheral.

2011年的最后一个季度，Amazon配送服务为卖家们运送了数千万件商品。当卖家使用Amazon配送服务时，他们的商品可以搭配Prime会员服务、Super Saver Shipping和Amazon客服支持。Amazon配送服务是易于使用的自助服务，而且是库存管理后台（Amazon Seller Central）的重要组成。对于更倾向技术的使用者，它还提供了一组API，让使用者可以像使用大型计算器外围设备一样，使用我们的全球配送中心网络。

I am emphasizing the self-service nature of these platforms because it’s important for a reason I think is somewhat non-obvious: even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation. When a platform is self-service, even the improbable ideas can get tried, because there’s no expert gatekeeper ready to say “that will never work!” And guess what – many of those improbable ideas do work, and society is the beneficiary of that diversity.

我要再次强调这些平台的「自助服务」特性，因为我认为它容易被忽略，但却非常重要。即使是立意良好的管制，也会降低创新的速度。当一个平台的服务是自助式的，客户有什么新想法就可以立即尝试，因为没有人会跳出来说「别那么做！那行不通！」很多看似不可能的想法最后确实起作用，最终整个社会从这些点子中受益匪浅。

Kindle Direct Publishing has quickly taken on astonishing scale – more than a thousand KDP authors now each sell more than a thousand copies a month, some have already reached hundreds of thousands of sales, and two have already joined the Kindle Million Club. KDP is a big win for authors. Authors who use KDP get to keep their copyrights, keep their derivative rights, get to publish on their schedule – a typical delay in traditional publishing can be a year or more from the time the book is finished – and … saving the best for last … KDP authors can get paid royalties of 70%. The largest traditional publishers pay royalties of only 17.5% on ebooks (they pay 25% of 70% of the selling price which works out to be 17.5% of the selling price). The KDP royalty structure is completely transformative for authors. A typical selling price for a KDP book is a reader-friendly $2.99 – authors get approximately $2 of that! With the legacy royalty of 17.5%, the selling price would have to be $11.43 to yield the same $2 per unit royalty. I assure you that authors sell many, many more copies at $2.99 than they would at $11.43.

Kindle自助出版一推出之后，很快就发展到令人惊讶的规模－如今有上千名作家每月卖出超过1000册书籍，其中有两名作家甚至达到Kindle百万销量俱乐部。Kindle自助出版能大大帮助作者，作者可以透过它保有版权及衍生权利，可以在书籍完成后就计划出版，不用像传统出版一样等上一段时间。最有价值的是，使用Kindle自助出版的作者可以拿到70%版税。最大型的传统出版商只给电子书作者17.5%版税（70%版税再25%）。Kindle自助出版的版税计算方式对作者来说是非常创新的。一般来说，一本Kindle电子书的售价是2.99美元，其中作者大约可以得到2美元。以传统出版商17.5%版税的方式来计算，作者想要得到同样的2美元收入，需要卖掉的是一本定价高达11.43美元的书。我跟你保证，作者以较低的2.99美元价格销售，可以卖掉更多册书籍。

Kindle Direct Publishing is good for readers because they get lower prices, but perhaps just as important, readers also get access to more diversity since authors that might have been rejected by establishment publishing channels now get their chance in the marketplace. You can get a pretty good window into this. Take a look at the Kindle best-seller list, and compare it to the New York Times best-seller list – which is more diverse? The Kindle list is chock-full of books from small presses and self-published authors, while the New York Times list is dominated by successful and established authors.

Kindle自助出版对于读者来说也有好处，他们可以得到更便宜的书籍，以及更重要的是，还有更多样化的书籍，因为那些可能会被出版社拒绝的书籍，现在都有机会被出版，并且很容易被你找到。看一下Kindle的畅销排行榜你就会发现，与《New York Times》的畅销排行榜相比，Kindle的排行榜内容多样性比较高。Kindle的排行榜中挤满了小型出版社和自费出版的书籍，而《New York Times》的排行榜则以知名作家的著作为主。

Amazonians are leaning into the future, with radical and transformational innovations that create value for thousands of authors, entrepreneurs, and developers. Invention has become second nature at Amazon, and in my view the team’s pace of innovation is even accelerating – I can assure you it’s very energizing. I’m extremely proud of the whole team, and feel lucky to have a front row seat.

Amazon人正以崭新的、变革性的创新迈向未来，为成千上万的作家、企业家、开发者创造价值。创新已经成为Amazon的第二天性，团队的创新脚步越来越快。我可以向你保证，我们正踩着充满活力的步伐。我对于整个团队的表现感到十分自豪，拥有这个团队的前排座位我感到十分幸运。

As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1!

如同往常，我把我们在1997年写的致股东信附在文末。我们的价值观依然不变，今天依旧是Day 1。

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

杰夫·贝索斯

Amazon创始人暨CEO

我的观点

今年的信，讲了很多的用户故事。包括一个AWS客户的，一个亚马逊物流的和N个Kindle自出版业务。

这些都是一些成功案例，是帮助别人成功的案例。因为亚马逊很多的自助服务，客户可以不受限制的使用这些服务。 所以，客户有什么样的想法就可以去试试，没有限制。这能让客户成功。

其实自主属性是非常好的，这可以给客户无限制的服务，不限制客户的想法。想想，在没有云服务的时候，做一个网站，做个App会有多难。 云计算的发展，让很多时候都没有了门槛。包括亚马逊举的物流的例子和卖货的例子。 以前你想开点是很困难，现在在淘宝，亚马逊可能十分钟就可以有一个店铺，还提供了更多非常方便的服务，创业的门槛降得很低了。

这么看，其实国内的很多制度限制了创新的发展。