How Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates reacted to Biden’s victory

Tech honchos including Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos congratulated president-elect Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris after their victory in the US presidential election.

Sharing his thoughts in an Instagram post on Sunday, Bezos said their victory signifies that “unity, empathy and decency are not characteristics of a bygone era.”

“By voting in record numbers, the American people proved again that our democracy is strong,” said Bezos who faced heat from president Donald Trump over the Amazon’s CEO’s ownership of The Washington Post and Amazon’s relationship with the US Postal Service.

Gates, who has been a critic of Trump’s response to the pandemic, said in a tweet that he looked forward “to working with the new administration and leaders on both sides in Congress on getting the surging pandemic under control, engaging partners around the world on issues like poverty and climate change, and addressing issues of inequality and opportunity at home.”

Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote a blog post to offer congratulations to the new president- and vice-president-elect.

“Election Day this year turned into a very long and tense election week, with many Americans glued to their screens anxiously awaiting the outcome. It has been commonplace to hear pundits speculate that we have seldom seemed such a divided country,” he said.

“If true, this also makes a different proposition even more self-evident. If we are to move forward as a nation, we must build new bridges to close the gaps that divide us.”

Joining them in Congratulating the new president- and vice-president-elect were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Priscilla Chan, wife of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and cofounder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

“After a few long days, we now know that Joe Biden will be our next president – and for the first time in 231 years, our next vice president will be a Black and South Asian American woman who is the daughter of immigrants,” Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post.

“There are times when America takes a big step toward creating a government that reflects the diverse country we are. Today is one of those days.”