Considering the ongoing skirmishes going on right now between Amazon and Google over digital book publishing, it’s more than ironic that Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was one of only a few initial investors in the search giant.

But–in one of the many interesting details in New Yorker author Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It”–it was indeed Bezos who invested $250,000 in the start-up in 1998 at four cents a share.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

There’s a great excerpt in the New Yorker this week.

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Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

Well, we’re still going–making the same long-term bet that the digital revolution will keep rolling as we did at D1. Here’s our lineup for D7.

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Many years ago in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom, when working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, BoomTown redubbed an annual dinner that book agent John Brockman threw at the TED conference.

It was jokingly called the “Millionaires’ Dinner,” but I renamed it the “Billionaires’ Dinner.”

That was due to the frothy fortunes that had been made at the time by the Internet pioneers, from Amazon to AOL to eBay. Get it?!?

Well, despite the economic meltdown, there were still a lot of billionaires in attendance at Brockman’s most recent dinner last Thursday in Long Beach. But he recounted to me that the proceedings were a lot more focused on the serious times we are in, as was the whole digerati-packed conference held last week.

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About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 4 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Amazon.com’s President, CEO, Chairman and, oh yes, Founder, Jeff Bezos.

The e-commerce giant seems to be firing on all cylinders of late, along with making some innovative moves, such as the recent introduction of its e-book reader, the Kindle.

In this video, Bezos takes questions from the audience about digital rights management and other issues related to the Kindle, and about streaming videos.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Amazon.com’s President, CEO, Chairman and, oh yes, Founder, Jeff Bezos.

The e-commerce giant seems of be firing on all cylinders of late, along with making some innovative moves, such as the recent introduction of its e-book reader, the Kindle.

In this video, Bezos talks about the consumer digital download business, including competition with Apple’s iTunes, Amazon.com’s Web services business and the impact of the economic slowdown on the online retailer.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Amazon President, CEO, Chairman and, oh yes, Founder, of Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos.

The e-commerce giant seems of be firing on all cylinders of late, along with making some innovative moves, such as the recent introduction of its e-book reader, the Kindle.

In this video, Bezos talks more about the Kindle and its features, including what it takes to make a great digital book reading experience, as well the the future of the music and video download business.

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The Wall Street Journal published a special tab about our sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place live two weeks ago.

The Journal editors selected about half of the interviews done there by Walt Mossberg and me, either separately or together, and edited the longer transcripts down to the parts they thought readers would like best.

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While Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang hemmed and hawed about what had happened in their disastrous takeover battle that ended not with a bang, but a whimper, everyone else who appeared onstage at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference last week was a bit more definitive about what should occur now:

Get it done.

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Earlier this week, BoomTown posted our speaker list for the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, which will take place in a few weeks–May 27 to 29, to be exact–in Carlsbad, Calif.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo, and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

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Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.
All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional [...]

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Oh, Max!
I just got through telling someone who asked me that I thought you, Slide founder Max Levchin, was one of the smarter Web 2.0 characters.
Then, of course, you get to be on the cover of Portfolio magazine for its “Brilliant” issue this month. Apparently, Max, you are Silicon Valley’s new “It” Boy.

But for all [...]

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Since BoomTown did an obsessive countdown after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang last year unwisely promised a 100-day, top-to-bottom look at the company, with “no sacred cows” spared (as it turned out, they all were), I decided that–after the month-mark had passed since Microsoft made its unsolicited bid for Yahoo–it was time for a count-up!

Thus, Day 32!

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Below is a video interview with Amazon’s majordomo Jeff Bezos conducted by The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Trachtenberg about the new $400 Kindle wireless electronic-book reader that the online retailer unveiled last week.
So far the reviews have been less than whelming–too clunky, too pricey, too wonky, to name a few of the complaints–but it’s interesting [...]

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