Elon Musk mocks Jeff Bezos after he takes his place as the richest man in the world
The CEO of Tesla teased the founder of Amazon by responding to one of his tweets with a simple emoji.
On Monday, Elon Musk became the richest man in the world, ahead of Jeff Bezos. Thanks to a surge in Tesla's shares, the South African entrepreneur is now worth more than $ 200 billion, like Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault before him. In reality, when it comes to such large sums, fortunes become very fluctuating depending on the movement of the shares of their respective companies. It is therefore quite likely that the situation will reverse but for now, Elon Musk is enjoying his place in the sun. Even if it means scratching the founder of Blue Origin a little.
Tesla's CEO sarcastically awarded him a silver medal on Twitter, as if thanking him for his participation and congratulating him on his “modest” second place. A reflex to which Elon Musk has accustomed us, he who is particularly fond of this kind of jokes on the Internet and that some perceive as a real troll. On September 28, a day after announcing his number one spot, the CEO of SpaceX declared: “I will send a giant statue of the number 2 to Jeffrey B., with a silver medal”. Finally, “Jeffrey B.” will only have received the silver medal, virtually, and in the form of an emoticon. If this joke sounds good child, it nevertheless hides a rivalry and more concrete tensions between the two men, caused in part by their race for space. In August, still humorously Elon Musk tweeted that "Besos [sic] has retired [as CEO of Amazon] so that he can file a full-time complaint against SpaceX."
The Blue Origin company, after losing a government contract with SpaceX to send astronauts to the Moon, sued NASA. Elon Musk's company had thus been delayed in its plans. But Jeff Bezos didn't stop there. The billionaire Albuquerque empire has also prompted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates telecommunications in the United States, to reject new plans submitted by SpaceX for the launch of the Starlink project.
It is a constellation of satellites in deployment since 2018 and which would be used to power the global Internet service from space. For Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk's plans for Starlink aren't clear enough and need to be reassessed. Here, it is actually more of a request than a due process.
It is also interesting to look at the original tweet posted by Jeff Bezos, below which Elon Musk awarded him this famous silver medal. It is from the May 31, 1999 front page of the American newspaper Barron's, titled “Amazon.Bomb”. An article in this edition of 22 years ago announced the sinking of a certain Jeff Bezos and his young company, Amazon, at the time when online commerce was still an unknown and promising El Dorado.
The headline read: "The idea that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has created a new business paradigm is stupid." The billionaire was then described as "mere intermediary" by the author of the article, who predicted that "the real winners of Internet commerce will be the firms which sell their own products directly to the consumer". “Look at what's going on with Sony, Dell and Bertelsmann right now,” he added. Jeff Bezos' Twitter account, in addition to posting this an arsonist, read: “Listen and be open, but don't let anyone tell you who you are.
This was just one of many articles that reminded us of how badly we were going to fail. Today, Amazon is one of the most successful companies in the world and has revolutionized two totally different industries ”. The author of the article must bite his fingers.
Listen and be open, but don’t let anybody tell you who you are. This was just one of the many stories telling us all the ways we were going to fail. Today, Amazon is one of the world’s most successful companies and has revolutionized two entirely different industries. pic.twitter.com/MgMsQHwqZl
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) October 11, 2021
Another front in a growing rivalry: Amazon Urges FCC to Deny SpaceX's Plan for Second-Generation Starlink https://t.co/bHn85RsmW4 #PCMag
— Christian Davenport (@wapodavenport) August 26, 2021
Listen and be open, but don’t let anybody tell you who you are. This was just one of the many stories telling us all the ways we were going to fail. Today, Amazon is one of the world’s most successful companies and has revolutionized two entirely different industries. pic.twitter.com/MgMsQHwqZl
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) October 11, 2021
