For a few hours today, Amazon's Jeff Bezos was the richest man in the world

For Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, today was "easy come, easy go." This morning, as the stock market anticipated the company's earnings report after the bell, Bezos'  holdings in the online retailer (and thanks to the smart speaker, now considered a tech innovator) amounted to $90.6 billion. That put Bezos $500 million ahead of Microsoft founder Bill Gates to become the richest man in the world.

Hopefully, no one ordered Bezos any t-shirts or coffee mugs with that title, because by the time evening descended on the West Coast, Gates had the lead once again. This happened when a ...