Elon Musk took a jab at Jeff Bezos on Twitter on Friday, mocking his recent decision to step down as Amazon CEO exactly 27 years after he founded the US online business and cloud computing company.
In July, Bezos handed the reins over to Andy Jassy in order to focus on "new products and early initiatives". However, according to Musk, the real reason his rival stepped down was to free up time to pursue lawsuits targeting his company SpaceX.
Misspelling Bezos’ name to form the Spanish word for “kisses”, Musk claimed that the founder of Amazon was looking to take up filing lawsuits as a “full-time job”.
Musk made the comments in a reply to a tweet from a reporter working for the Bezos-owned Washington Post, who weighed in on what he said was “another front in a growing rivalry”.
Galactic Ambitions
The private spaceflight company, Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Bezos, sued the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) earlier this month over the government agency’s decision to award a $2.9 billion moon lander contract to SpaceX.
Furthermore, Amazon's satellite-internet subsidiary Project Kuiper, which itself is yet to launch any satellites, filed a protest letter against SpaceX's plans for a network of second-generation Starlink internet satellites on 25 August, insisting it broke the FCC's rules by “submitting two configurations”.
Elon Musk's company seeks to launch a second-generation Starlink constellation of nearly 30,000 satellites into orbit, which would complement its 1,740 satellites already in space. The aerospace company proposed two configurations for the network in an amendment to the FCC on August 18, while intending to use only one.
Netizens took a dim view of this “soap opera” competition between the two wealthiest men in the world, according to Forbes.
Social media users weighed in on the rivalry between Musk and Bezos.