Jeremy Vine, a presenter, was seen on June 8, 2000, sitting behind the Newsnight desk, studying a report on the e-commerce industry, which appeared to be in disarray. The guest of the evening, 36-year-old Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, Inc., was seated across the table from him.
When the interview was conducted for the premier current affairs show, Amazon had arrived at a significant turning point in its history. The dot-com boom had caused an economic bubble by the middle of 2000, which was about to explode.
As Vine noted in his Newsnight story, despite Amazon’s $1.6 billion (£1.27 billion) in sales in 1999, the company lost $720 million (£567 million) and its stock price fluctuated, falling from $113 per share in December 1999 to $52 in June 2000.
Even with the company’s rapid and early success, Amazon was still taken aback.
