Amazon founder Jeff Bezos denies pushing bookstores to brink of extinction

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London, Oct. 13: Amazon’s founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos has dismissed claims that the firm’s online bookselling services will eventually lead to an end of local book shops and bookstores.

Bezos, who earned a 21 billion-dollar fortune through the launch of Amazon.com in 1994, has often been accused of being the leader of the Internet trend of bookselling that is posing a threat on libraries in town centres and defacing local high streets.

However, he believes that the growing competition would actually yield better results for both kinds of businesses, adding that its upto the customers to decide where they want to purchase a book.

“I’d say two things: firstly, high street shops will evolve so they won’t freeze in time, they’ll change, they’ll evolve, they’ll figure out a new path. The competition will make everybody better,” Bezos told the Telegraph, during an interview.

“And our job is to provide the best service we can, efficient, low prices, the best selection. The customers decide where they want to shop. But if somebody buys a Kindle they continue to buy physical books,” he added.

New Mexico-born Bezos also said that he never could imagine that his website could reach a turnover of 100 million dollars within a span of 2 years, contrary to his estimated time of a decade.

“I saw the opportunity for the internet to improve the customer experience for book buyers, there are three million books and you can’t fit them in a store, so they have to carry only the best sellers. When we launched we had over a million books. But I had no idea it would take so little time,” he said. (ANI)