[motorest]

> Like a lot of big tech companies Amazon is a small number of teams with profitable products and a whole bunch of other things that don’t make money.

I think that's a simplistic view of the issue. At Amazon, each team owns at best specific features embedded in products. Some projects such as e-readers are there as loss leaders to support cash cows such as it's ebook market. From your simplistic opinion, Amazon would have cut zero employees from it's books organization as it's business is booming and it's a profit center. But that doesn't match reality.

Also note that you are making that unfounded claim while commenting on news that Amazon is going to focus it's firing round on HR. Is HR a profit center now?

> Events like this are when the teams not contributing to the bottom line are cleaned up.

Except that's bullshit. Amazon decimated teams by firing new arrivals and by transferring projects out of the US into Europe and Asia. This hasn't anything to do with efficiency or performance in mind.

[bix6]

Kindle is a loss leader?

[motorest]

> Kindle is a loss leader?

What do you think "Kindle" is? Is it a specific device? Is it Kindle for Web? Is it the Android or iPhone apps? Is it Kindle for Windows or Kindle for Mac? Among these, can you count how many are paid?

[apparent]

At $50, Kindle Fire tablets sure are. The regular Kindles, maybe less so.