[take4]

Amazon has not operated at a loss since 2001. They've had positive free cash flow every year since then.

[azemetre]

Apparently people (the investor class) are upset that a company has the audacity to the invest in itself rather than pay out dividends.

The absolute horror.

[dpark]

Most actual investors in Amazon were never upset by this. They bought with the full knowledge that Bezos was playing a long game.

[kevin_b_er]

They also fended off any sort of corporate raiders/vulture capitalists who could leverage a billion in debt, buy it out, take it private, then strip it of assets.

[maxerickson]

Growing tech companies have never really been expected to pump out dividends.

Microsoft didn't pay one until 2003, when it was 28 years old and sitting on $43 billion in cash (and then it declared an annual dividend totalling less than $1 billion).