Amazon’s $13.4 billion bet to take on the $800 billion grocery business in the United<br />States by acquiring Whole Foods fits perfectly into the retailer’s business model.<br />Unlike almost any other chief executive, Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has built his company by embracing risk, ignoring obvious moves<br />and imagining what customers want next — even before they know it.<br />“If you’re going to take bold bets, they’re going to be experiments,” Mr. Bezos explained.<br />“I’ve made billions of dollars of failures,” Mr. Bezos said at a 2014 conference, adding<br />that it would be like “a root canal with no anesthesia” if he listed them.<br />The company’s $13.4 billion deal for Whole Foods is the latest signal of Amazon’s ambitions to have a hold on nearly<br />every facet our lives — like the computer servers that power our favorite websites and the food we eat.<br />“When you have such a long-term perspective that you think in decades instead of quarters, it allows you to do things and take risks<br />that other companies believe would not be in their best interests,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with the investment firm Robert W. Baird & Company.<br />Some Amazon critics would like the Whole Foods deal to be the trigger for reining in the company.<br />Mr. Bezos redoubled his focus on customers, largely closed the company off to the media and got to work doing some serious experiments.<br />“Jeff Bezos is making shopping great,” said Chris Kubica, an e-book consultant and software developer who watches Amazon closely.
