That Man in the Cardboard Box

By James Kelly, Deputy Managing Editor

When Jeff Bezos came to lunch at TIME last month, the second most noticeable thing about him was his laugh, a loud rat-a-tat-tat that startled some of us at first and then became infectious. The most noticeable thing about Bezos, however, was his intelligent passion. He fervently believes that he and Amazon.com will change shopping forever and that it is only a matter of time before you buy just about everything you need, from toothpaste to Tiffany lamps, on the Web.

We don't know how right Bezos is, but as the driving force behind the striking growth in Internet commerce over the past 12 months, he has helped guarantee that the world of buying and selling will never be the same.

Joshua Quittner, who wrote the profile of our 1999 Person of the Year, spent three weeks trailing Bezos. "He's manic without the depression," says Quittner, who writes our Personal Time technology column and edits TIME DIGITAL. Quittner and photographer David Burnett even stayed at Bezos' Seattle, Wash., home overnight, where they played way too much Foosball. (How good is Bezos? Let's just say that as a Foosball player, Bezos is a great Internet strategist.)

"The man is on a mission," observes Quittner. "This is not about money. He lives quite modestly, considering he's worth $10 billion. He genuinely believes that come what may, he's going to change the fundamental equation between buyer and seller, putting more power in the consumer's hands."

And along the way, more money in the pockets of Amazon employees. Michael Krantz, our San Francisco bureau chief, hung around their offices in Seattle for a few days and noticed how the subject of stock options never came up. "They're all imbued with this giddy faith that their best days lie ahead of them," says Krantz. "The subtext, of course, which they are well trained never to mention to reporters, is that if they're right, a lot of them are going to be extremely rich."

No examination of e-commerce would be complete without a look at eBay, the online-auction business that is part swap meet, part town square. Senior writer Adam Cohen not only toured the company in San Jose, Calif., but also flew to Paris (ah, the sacrifices journalists make!) to have coffee with the company's elusive founder, Pierre Omidyar.

Lest our readers think shopping malls are dead, staff writer Karl Taro Greenfeld looks at clicks-and-mortar companies, which are integrating actual stores with online services, and concludes that they may be best positioned to own the future. Chris Taylor examines the food fight among online grocery services, and Maryanne Murray Buechner wonders how Wal-Mart will fare in an e-commerce world. "The Internet clearly has been one of the most dynamic forces in the history of capitalism," says business editor Bill Saporito, who produced the package with help from senior reporter Bernard Baumohl, deputy picture editor Rick Boeth and associate art director D.W. Pine III.

We asked Margaret Carlson, who usually writes about politicians, to order up dinner on the Web and have a party. The second half of that proposition went well; the first part makes for quite a tale. And despite a lot of coaxing to order only exotic items, Margaret wanted a safety dish and clicked for a ham. Perhaps covering politicians all these years...

Now, about the cover image. Photographer Greg Heisler and art director Arthur Hochstein came up with the idea of shooting our Person of the Year inside an Amazon shipping box, complete with plastic-foam chips. Not only was Bezos game but his cheerfulness never flagged even after he'd spent nearly an hour in cardboard. Bezos' gleeful reaction when he saw a Polaroid shot of the image that day: "This is really weird!"

We'll take that as a compliment.

James Kelly, Deputy Managing Editor