Elon Musk calls for breakup of Amazon
Elon Musk tweeted its ‘Time to break up Amazon’, after the tech giant said Musk’s upcoming COVID-19 book does not meet Amazon’s guidelines for sale.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: You're watching "On The Move" on Yahoo Finance. We have been watching Elon Musk start to criticize yet-- he's got yet another target, I guess you could say. The target now is Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
Rick Newman, Musk recently said he was going to step back from Twitter for a bit, but then he didn't.
RICK NEWMAN: No. He says it's time to break up Amazon, and he was referring to an author who was complaining that Amazon would not publish his e-book because it was about the coronavirus, and Amazon didn't want to publish something that I guess puts some questionable information out there. But Amazon relented on that and said it was a mistake, but let's look at what else is going on here.
Amazon actually is in position to be a competitor of Tesla because it has invested in an electric-vehicle startup called Rivian, and Amazon wants Rivian to build 100,000 electric vans that Amazon is going to use in its distribution fleet. So Amazon essentially has a stake in a company, an electric-vehicle company, that competes with Tesla. So of course Elon Musk wants to break up Amazon because he doesn't want Amazon's money behind a competitor. He may as well just come out and say the governments should break up General Motors and Toyota because they might interfere with Tesla's market share in the future.
JULIE HYMAN: And also not to mention that the two are also competitors when it comes to space, right, because Bezos backs Blue Origin and Musk, of course, backs SpaceX. Adam, did you want to say anything about this whole situation?
ADAM SHAPIRO: No. I just think Mr. Musk is riding high after SpaceX and feeling emboldened by the success he's had. But Rick just brought up Rivian. They're delivering-- I think they're going to begin delivering the vans that Amazon had ordered, plus Rivian is partnering with Ford. I mean, Tesla, yeah, it's cool. It's hot. It's in China. Rivian's going to be revving right up and perhaps pass them.
RICK NEWMAN: Yeah. I mean, you know, there are a bunch of startup opportunities out there.
Rivian has a very interesting architecture that gives it something a little different. It has this architecture that actually is good for trucks and SUVs, which is why Ford is-- Ford is developing its own electric technology, but it likes the Rivian platform because it's especially well suited toward trucks. And guess what? Tesla has a big electric truck coming out. So wouldn't it be great to kneecap the competition on electric trucks? Elon Musk is not disclosing what's a very self-serving interest here.
