Amazon

About the company

Amazon.com, Inc. (/ˈæməzɒn/ AM-ə-zon) is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is one of the world's most valuable brands. It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. Initially an online marketplace for books, it has expanded into a multitude of product categories: a strategy that has earned it the moniker The Everything Store. It has multiple subsidiaries including Amazon Web Services (cloud computing), Zoox (autonomous vehicles), Kuiper Systems (satellite Internet), Amazon Lab126 (computer hardware R&D). Its other subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer.

Amazon has earned a reputation as a disruptor of well-established industries through technological innovation and mass scale. As of 2021, it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service through AWS, live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share. In 2021, it surpassed Walmart as the world's largest retailer outside of China, driven in large part by its paid subscription plan, Amazon Prime, which has over 200 million subscribers worldwide. It is the second-largest private employer in the United States.

Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible units. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, film and television content through Amazon Studios, and is the owner of film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer since 2022. It also produces consumer electronics—most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TV.

Amazon has been criticized for customer data collection practices, a toxic work culture, tax avoidance, and anti-competitive behavior.

History

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in July 1994, who chose Seattle for its abundance of technical talent, as Microsoft was in the area. Mackenzie Scott was also instrumental in its founding, and drove across the country with Bezos to start it. When Scott graduated, she applied to work for D. E. Shaw & Co., a quantitative hedge fund in New York City, as a research associate to "pay the bills while working on her novels". Bezos, then a vice-president at the firm, met her when he interviewed her.

Amazon went public in May 1997. It began selling music and videos in 1998, and began international operations by acquiring online sellers of books in the United Kingdom and Germany. The following year, it began selling video games, consumer electronics, home improvement items, software, games, and toys.

In 2002, it launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provided data on website popularity, Internet traffic patterns, and other statistics for marketers and developers. In 2006, it grew its AWS portfolio when Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which rented computer processing power, provided Simple Storage Service (S3), and rented data storage via the Internet, also became available. That year, Amazon also started Fulfillment by Amazon which allowed individuals and small companies to sell items through the company's Internet site. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems to automate its inventory management business. It purchased the Whole Foods Market supermarket chain in 2017.

On February 2, 2021, Amazon announced that Jeff Bezos would step down as CEO to become executive chair of Amazon's board in Q3 of 2021. Andy Jassy, previously CEO of AWS, became Amazon's CEO.