Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap.

Today's Thursday, February 4th.

Oil prices are up, new COVID infections are down in 47 states, and we're focused on Jeff

Bezos's place in history. Jeff Bezos earlier this week announced plans to retire as CEO of Amazon,

effective this summer to be succeeded by the head of Amazon's cloud services business, Andy Jassy.

But Bezos is just 57 years old, and this isn't the sort of retirement that's going to include

nonstop rounds of golf on either side of leisurely

lunches. For starters, Bezos is sticking around at Amazon in an executive chairman role.

Second, he still owns the Washington Post. Oh, and then there is Blue Origin, the rocket company he

founded two years before Elon Musk founded SpaceX. What Bezos' announcement does give us, though, is a good moment to begin reflecting

on his legacy.

Remember, a lot of people thought it was ridiculous to sell books through the internet.

We had bookstores and libraries.

People thought free delivery would be a bottom line killer and two-hour delivery, a logistical

one. And then there's AWS, the cloud

services business, which launched when most companies thought it was the most sensible and safest

to have their servers on premises. Bezos and Amazon, of course, proved their doubters wrong

at every turn. At the same time, though, they've been increasingly criticized for everything from

workplace conditions to having too much market power, both of which might be addressed by federal

legislation this year. So to help put Bezos in more historical context and to think about the

future of what he's built, we want to talk to Walter Isaacson, the former Time Magazine editor, Steve Jobs biographer, and current history professor at Tulane University.

That conversation in 15 seconds.

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