Bill Gates writes about his fellow Seattle billionaire, Jeff Bezos, in a piece for Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. It is a short, but fascinating essay. Gates calls the Amazon.com founder "one of those insatiable pioneers of business and technology."

He finishes the piece by comparing Bezos to Johannes Gutenberg, writing that the Kindle may change how people read books.

Here's a short excerpt:

"Pioneers are also survivors. You have to have a lot of respect for how Jeff's vision and determination carried his young company through the dotcom bust early in the decade. While other e-businesses flamed out in spectacular fashion, Amazon held steady and eventually broadened its inventories and lines of business far beyond what even the largest retailers can boast of offering."

Gates and Bezos are both geeks at heart, and that's part of what makes the piece compelling. What's also interesting is -- in all of my years of covering technology -- I can't recall a moment when there's been any sort of public interaction between the two technology titans.

You can read the full essay here. Others on the list this year include Edward Kennedy (Arnold Schwarzenneger essay); 4Chan.org creator Moot (Rick Astley essay); Twitter founders Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams (Ashton Kutcher essay).