Eccentric entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk consistently finds ways to make it to the news. Although the executive is well-regarded for his PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company, he is quite outspoken on social media platforms like Twitter. Just a few weeks ago, he shot down rumors of demanding the Apple CEO position from Tim Cook in a very public manner. Now, he has made his way to Neowin for taking a dig at Amazon"s recently-retired and former CEO Jeff Bezos.
Essentially, the problem dates back to when NASA awarded a $2.9 billion contract to Musk"s SpaceX for a manned lunar mission. In Godfather-esque style, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made an offer to the U.S. space agency to award the contract to his Blue Origin company instead, and in return, Bezos would waive off $2 billion in payments. This offer was rejected by NASA in just a couple of days.
It seems that reeling from its defeat on that issue, Amazon is now urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny SpaceX" plans to develop and launch a second-generation Starlink network. The firm"s own satellite broadband company, Kuiper Systems, alleges that the plans in question are too broad, speculative, and break FCC rules.
Musk is obviously not too happy with the allegation and has taken a dig at former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by tweeting the following:
Turns out Besos retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2021
Bezos stepped down from his role as Amazon CEO at the start of July and was succeeded by Andy Jassy. Musk"s dig clearly implies that Bezos left Amazon so he could spend more time causing problems for SpaceX.
It is important to note that Amazon has just filed a formal protest to the FCC and hasn"t actually initiated a lawsuit. It will be interesting to see how this matter evolves, but you can be sure that Musk"s Twitter handle will be providing snarky updates on the proceedings moving forward too.