Out of curiosity, where did all of that money go? In 2003, Bezos noted that $900 mil-lion went to business technology; $300 million was spent on the fulfillment centers; and
$700 million on marketing and customer acquisition [Murphy 2003]. That last part largely
represents selling books at a loss or offering free shipping while trying to attract customers.
Those numbers add up to the $1.9 billion debt, but what happened to the other $1 billion in
net losses? Interestingly, according to the 2010 Annual Report, Amazon still runs a loss on
shipping. In 2010, the company declared shipping revenue of $1.2 billion, against outbound
shipping costs of $2.6 billion, for a net loss of $1.4 billion!