Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is an American international electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer.[9][10][11] Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, VHSs, CDs, video and MP3 downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics—notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet computer—and is a major provider of cloud computing services.
Jeff Bezos incorporated the company (as Cadabra) in July 1994 and the site went online as Amazon.com in 1995.[12] The company was renamed after the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world,[12] which in turn was named after the Amazons, the legendary nation of female warriors in Greek mythology.
Amazon has separate retail websites for United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico, with international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products.[6] In 2011, it had professed an intention to launch its websites in Poland,[13] Netherlands, and Sweden, as well.[14]
The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his
"regret minimization framework", which described his efforts to fend off
any regrets for not participating sooner in the Internet business boom
during that time.[15] In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-president of D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle. He began to work on a business plan for what would eventually become Amazon.com.
After reading a report about the future of the Internet which
projected annual Web commerce growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of
20 products which could be marketed online. He narrowed the list to what
he felt were the five most promising products which included: compact
discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos
finally decided that his new business would sell books online, due to
the large world-wide demand for literature, the low price points for
books, along with the huge number of titles available in print.[16] Amazon[17] was originally founded in Bezos' garage in Bellevue, Washington.[18]
The company began as an online bookstore.[19]
In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states and
over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to
$20,000/week.[20] While the largest brick and mortar bookstores and mail order
catalogs might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could "carry"
several times more, since they had an almost unlimited virtual (not
actual) warehouse: those of the actual product makers/suppliers.
Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with "A" so that it
would appear early in alphabetic order. He began looking through the
dictionary and settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was
"exotic and different" just as he planned for his store to be, and he
believed it was the biggest river in the world, and he planned to make
his store the biggest in the world.[12]
Since 2000, Amazon's logotype has featured a curved arrow leading from A
to Z, representing that they carry every product from A to Z, with the
arrow shaped like a smile.[21]
Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.[22] In October 1995, the company announced itself to the public.[23] In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price of US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).
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| Type |
Public |
| Traded as |
NASDAQ: AMZN
NASDAQ-100 Component
S&P 500 Component |
| Foundation date |
1994 |
| Headquarters |
Seattle, Washington, United States[1][2][3] |
| Area served |
Worldwide |
| Founder(s) |
Jeff Bezos |
| Key people |
Jeff Bezos
(Chairman, President & CEO) |
| Industry |
Internet, online retailing |
| Products |
A2Z Development, A9.com, Alexa Internet, Amazon.com, Amazon Kindle, Amazon Studios, Amazon Web Services, Audible.com, dpreview.com, Endless.com, IMDb, LoveFilm, The Book Depository, Zappos.com, Woot, Junglee.com, goodreads.com, myhabit.com,[4] askville[5] |
| Revenue |
 US$ 61.09 billion (2012)[6] |
| Operating income |
 US$ 676 million (2012)[6] |
| Net income |
US$ −39 million (2012)[6] |
| Total assets |
US$ 32.535 billion (2012)[6] |
| Total equity |
US$ 8.19 billion (2012)[6] |
| Employees |
97,000 (June 2013)[7] |
| Subsidiaries |
Amazon Instant Video
Kindle |
| Website |
Amazon.com (original US site)
various national sites |
| Written in |
C++, Perl and Java |
| Alexa rank |
 8 (October 2013)[8] |
| Type of site |
E-commerce |
| Advertising |
Web banners, videos |
| Available in |
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese |
| Launched |
1995 |
|
