QuestionerI'm wondering about your interest in not just Apple, but all of the tech stocks like Amazon and Google, because you've avoided them you've stated in the past because they're complicated. You should stick with something you understand. On the other hand, Amazon and Google have what you call a very durable competitive advantage. They really hardly have any competitor.
WarrenWell, we certainly look at them. And we don't think of whether we should be in tech companies or not or that sort of thing. We are looking for things where we do get into the durability of the competitive advantage and whether we think that our opinion might be better than other people's opinion in assessing the probability of the durability, so to speak. But the truth is that I've watched Amazon from the start, and I think what Jeff Bezos says, is done is something close to a miracle. And the problem is if I think something will be a miracle, I tend not to bet on it. It would have been far better, obviously, if I had some insights into certain businesses. But, you know, in fact, Bill told me early on, Bill Gates told me early on, you know, that I think I was on all of this, and the suggestions. I turned to Google, but the trouble is I saw that Google was, was, was, was, was skipping past all of this, and then I wondered if anybody could skip past Google. And, uh, uh, I didn't go into Apple because it was a tech stock in the least. I mean, I went to Apple because I made certain, came to certain conclusions about, about both the intelligence with the capital would be employed, but more important about the value of an ecosystem. and how permanent that ecosystem could be and what the threats were to it and a whole bunch of things yeah we have a wonderful system if one of us is stupid in some area so is the other and of course we were not ideally located to be high-tech wizards you know how many people of our age quickly mastered google i've been to google headquarters they look to me like they look to me like there it looks like a kindergarten a very rich kindergarten i made the wrong decision on on google and amazon i just i really consider that a miracle that you could be doing amazon web services and and changing retail at the same time with rather you know without enormous amounts of capital and do it with the speed and effectiveness of what amazon has done i've just i would i underestimated uh I had a very, very, very high opinion of Jeff ability when I first met him and I underestimated him.
WarrenCharlie?
CharlieWell, my comment would be that the shareholders have one thing to be thankful for. Some of the age-related stupidity at headquarters has been ameliorated by Ted and Todd joining us. We are looking at the world with the aid of some younger eyes now, and they've had a contribution. contribution. Significant. Beyond their own investments. And so you're very lucky to have the new shareholders. Because there's a lot of ignorance in the older generation that needs removal.