Jeff Bezos is a relentless control freak;

As Steve Yegge, a former employee, once put it, “He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.” A relevant fact: Mr. Bezos originally thought of naming Amazon “Relentless.”

This paragraph is the key to understanding Bezos:

No one, apparently including Mr. Bezos himself, seems to know what he intends to do with that fabled newspaper. This is, after all, a man who once said the quality he most wanted in a wife was the ability to spring him from a third-world prison. He can probably be counted on to think unpredictably.

That's a good quality in a co-founder too: can spring you from a third world prison!

Bonus points:

“Every story you ever see about Amazon, it has that sentence: ‘An Amazon spokesman declined to comment,’ “ Mr. Marcus said.

Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, declined to comment.

What motivates Jeff Bezos:

People who have worked closely with Mr. Bezos say he refuses to waste time on anything that isn’t directly about the customer. “That’s where his ego is,” one former colleague said.

As tech companies grow old and big, they strive to keep the energy and boldness of the start-up they once were. They almost always fail. Amazon is the exception. “If a new product was launching, sometimes the day would never end,” a former employee said. As an Amazon joke has it, work-life balance is for people who do not like their work.