While Amazon is technically a public company, more than 50 % of shares are owned by the founder and consequently the control isn't split across a larger group of people.

Where do you got your 'more than 50%' from?

The Internet says Jeff Bezos has a bit more than 10%.

That is a good question. If I think about it, I have no idea :). Somehow I got the impression that Bezos as the founder still holds a controlling amount of shares, but if he owned 50% of all Amazon shares, he would be the richest person by a large margin. Anyway, it seems that Bezos basically did not have anyone to answer to while leading Amazon - amazon reportet losses for many years for the sake of growth. That means he had a free hand to implement strategies, which are long term profitable. And I attribute the success of Amazon to no small amount to this.

Well, despite reporting losses, the stock kept climbing up. So the other shareholders were apparently happy.

20 years is not very long term. Kepp in mind that Bosch was founded in 1886. If Amazon keeps up like this for the next one hundred years, I will fully agree with you.

-But management takes their cues from stockholders, and it would be a very hard sell indeed to convince stockholders that a decision resulting in lower profit in the short term but improve it long term should be made.

Hence companies which are either not publicly traded (like Bosch) or is majority owned by someone or other (like Amazon) is much more likely to be able to make long term decisions - as they are not always geared towards getting the most impressive earnings during the current quarter to satisfy stockholders.