Portfolio has an excerpt of a Puget Sound Business Journal profile of Jeff Bezos. PSBJ named Bezos Executive of the Year. Of course, Bezos declined to be interviewed and no other Amazon executives would talk to the magazine, but it still hints at some interesting stuff.

And the L.A. Times somehow managed to score an interview with Amazon's Kindle chief, Russ Grandinetti. It's a rare look inside the company, even though Grandinetti does mostly parrot the company line:

What's Amazon's purpose with Kindle?

Our vision is [to make] every book ever written, in any language, in print or out of print, all available within 60 seconds. And we want to make the customer experience great.

Some folks are irked that they can't easily transfer digital books they bought elsewhere into their Kindles. Why did you choose a proprietary technology?

We chose a format that we felt would give us better performance and superior ease of use. It's the reason why the Kindle has faster page turns than some of the other devices. Because we control our own standard, we can develop applications that let customers read Kindle books on the iPhone, Android tablet, iPad, BlackBerrys and PC.