What will Amazon do with $3 billion in nearly free money?

The tech giant has quietly raised capital -- at almost no cost.

FORTUNE -- While online shoppers were gobbling up e-deals on Cyber Monday, Amazon once again demonstrated its appetite for capital. It raised $3 billion in debt at ultra-low interest rates. Spread across three tranches of bonds that mature over 6 ½ years, Amazon will pay an average of 1.6%, which makes the loan nearly cost-free to Amazon, factoring in MORE

What Reid Hoffman should ask Steve Ballmer

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is interviewing the CEO of Microsoft tonight. Here are a few questions he should pose.

FORTUNE -- The Churchill Club and Microsoft made an interesting decision in choosing Reid Hoffman to interview Steve Ballmer tonight. Let me explain.

Churchill is Silicon Valley's answer to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco or the 92nd Street Y in New York. It is where big names from the technology industry speak, MORE

Inside Apple's major shakeup

What is really behind the biggest management shakeup at Apple since the Steve Jobs putsch that eliminated Gil Amelio in 1997?

FORTUNE -- Tim Cook's honeymoon at Apple is over.

Apple's (AAPL) CEO announced the departure of mobile software chief Scott Forstall on Monday. He also booted retail chief John Browett, who lasted all of eight months after having been hired from the U.K. retailer Dixons. The moves, together with the divvying MORE

Why employment matters

Work is important to us -- and not just when we've "made it." Maybe more significant is the role it plays when we're figuring out who we are.

FORTUNE -- I shared a sumptuous meal in New York recently with a group of extraordinarily successful business people. As an ice-breaker, everyone related a quick anecdote about their first job. You could see the delight on their faces as this group of MORE

Nest unveils its next device

Tony Fadell, the former Apple executive who oversaw the creation of the iPod, is showing off a new version of his whiz-bang thermostat.

FORTUNE -- Steve Jobs often was misunderstood to be sui generis, which Latin students and overly fancy writers will recognize as meaning "of its own kind" or deriving from nothing other than one's own creativity. In fact, Jobs was a careful student of those who came before him. MORE

Would Steve Jobs have released Maps?

The most asked question about Apple's mapping debacle is the hardest one to answer.

FORTUNE -- Over and over the past few days people want to ask me the identical question: Would Apple's Maps snafu have happened if Steve Jobs were alive?

I respond that I'll give them the easy answer first -- no -- but that I've got to give them the longer answer too. Because with Apple (AAPL), nothing is MORE

Who Steve Case is betting on now

Tech's slightly graying elder statesman is not so bullish on major media companies.

FORTUNE -- It comes as a wee shock that Steve Case is 54 years old. America Online, where he was CEO, went public 20 years ago, after all. That means that back in the Internet's Paleolithic Era, Case was about the same age as Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey is today. Not quite the pup that Mark MORE

What I've learned since the Apple event

Apple gets leakier--and even more profitable.

FORTUNE -- The facts and figures are all out from the iPhone 5 launch on Wednesday. The consensus: Apple didn't change anyone's world. But they're going to make a lot of money!

Here are some additional thoughts:

Apple's secret-keeping abilities are being challenged. Nick Bilton of The New York Times quoted me in a brief post suggesting Apple (AAPL) isn't any good at keeping secrets anymore. His evidence MORE

Money management, Silicon Valley-style

With a successful hedge fund and a top-secret security firm under his belt, Joe Lonsdale is trying something new.

FORTUNE -- Joe Lonsdale is what an earlier generation would have called a young man in a hurry. A protégé of investor Peter Thiel, Lonsdale helped him build Clarium Capital into a multibillion-dollar hedge fund. Then, again with Thiel, Lonsdale co-founded Palantir Technologies, a security analytics software firm.

Having made a small fortune MORE

Amazon ups the ante in war against Apple

Amazon has established itself as a credible alternative to Apple in the tablet market in so many ways.

FORTUNE -- The business-focused battle-of-the-titans storyline of late has been 'Apple versus Samsung,' widely understood as a proxy for 'Apple versus Google.' If Jeff Bezos accomplished one thing in his clear, solid, and meticulously articulated Kindle presentation in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday morning, it was to make the case to a consumer-focused audience MORE