Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

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.[18]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.

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra" on July 5, 1994.[11] Bezos changed the name to Amazon a year later after a lawyer misheard its original name as "cadaver".[19] The company went online as Amazon.com in 1995.[20]

Bezos selected the name Amazon by 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; the Amazon river, he noted was by far the "biggest" river in the world, and he planned to make his store the biggest in the world.[20] Bezos placed a premium on his head start in building a brand, telling a reporter, "There's nothing about our model that can't be copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it still built a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand names are more important online than they are in the physical world."[21] Additionally, a name beginning with "A" was preferential due to the probability it would occur at the top of any list that was alphabetized.

Since June 19, 2000, Amazon's logotype has featured a curved arrow leading from A to Z, representing that the company carries every product from A to Z, with the arrow shaped like a smile.[22]

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.[23] Amazon[24] was originally founded in Bezos' garage in Bellevue, Washington.[25]

The company began as an online bookstore, an idea spurred off with discussion with John Ingram of Ingram Book (now called Ingram Content Group), along with Keyur Patel who still holds a stake in Amazon.[26] 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.[27] 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 it would have an almost unlimited virtual (not actual) warehouse: those of the actual product makers/suppliers.

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.[28]In October 1995, the company announced itself to the public.[29] 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).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual; it did not expect to make a profit for four to five years. This "slow" growth caused stockholders to complain about the company not reaching profitability fast enough to justify investing in, or to even survive in the long-term. When thedot-com bubble burst at the start of the 21st century, destroying many e-companies in the process, Amazon survived, and grew on past the bubble burst to become a huge player in online sales. It finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million (i.e., 1¢ per share), on revenues of more than $1 billion. This profit margin, though extremely modest, proved to skeptics that Bezos' unconventional business model could succeed.[30]In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the world's largest bookstore" was false. Barnes and Noble asserted, "[It] isn't a bookstore at all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court, and Amazon continued to make the same claim."[31] Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen Walmart's trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was also settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and the reassignment of the former Walmart executives.[31]

Third-generation Amazon Kindle

Amazon product lines include several media (books, DVDs, music CDs, videotapes, and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal-care items, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry and watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items and toys & games.

The company launched amazon.com Auctions, a web auctions service, in March 1999. However, it failed to chip away at the large market share of the industry pioneer,eBay. Later, the company launched a fixed-pricemarketplace business, zShops, in September 1999, and the now defunct partnership with Sotheby's, calledSothebys.amazon.com, in November. Auctions and zShops evolved into Amazon Marketplace, a service launched in November 2000 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. As of October 2014, Amazon Marketplace is the largest of its kind, followed by similar marketplaces from Sears, Rakuten and Newegg.

In August 2007, Amazon announced AmazonFresh, a grocery service offering perishableand nonperishable foods. Customers could have orders delivered to their homes at dawn or during a specified daytime window. Delivery was initially restricted to residents of Mercer Island, Washington, and was later expanded to several ZIP codes in Seattle proper.[148]AmazonFresh also operated pick-up locations in the suburbs of Bellevue and Kirkland from summer 2007 through early 2008.

In 2012, Amazon announced the launch of Vine.com for buying green products, including groceries, household items, and apparel.[149] It is part of Quidsi, the company that Amazon bought in 2010 that also runs the sites Diapers.com (baby), Wag.com (pets), and YoYo.com (toys).[149] Amazon also owns other e-commerce sites like Shopbop.com,Woot.com, and Zappos.com.[149]

Amazon's Subscribe & Save program offers a discounted price on an item (usually sold in bulk), free shipping on every Subscribe & Save shipment, and automatic shipment of the item every one, two, three, or six months.[150]

In 2013, Amazon launched its site in India, amazon.in. It has started with electronic goods[151] and plans to expand into fashion apparel, beauty, home essentials, and healthcare categories by the end of 2013.[citation needed] In July 2014, Amazon had said it will invest $2 billion (Rs 12,000 crore) in India to expand business, after its largest Indian rival Flipkart announced $1 billion in funding.[152]

In 2014, Amazon sold 63% of all books bought online and 40% of all books sold overall.[153]

Fulfillment by Amazon Small and Light is a service introduced in 2015 that will provide fulfillment for small, light items from a center in Florence, Kentucky. The service will offer free standard shipping for small, light, low-value items offered on the site by 3rd party sellers.[154]

In 2015, a study by Survata found that 44% of respondents searching for products went directly to Amazon.com.[155]

In 2005, Amazon announced the creation of Amazon Prime, a membership offering free two-day shipping within the contiguous United States on all eligible purchases for a flat annual fee of $79 (equivalent to $96 in 2015),[156] as well as discounted one-day shipping rates.[157] Amazon launched the program in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom in 2007; in France (as "Amazon Premium") in 2008, in Italy in 2011, and in Canada in 2013.[158]

Amazon Prime membership in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States[159]also provides Amazon Video, the instant streaming of selected movies and TV shows at no additional cost.[160] In November 2011, it was announced that Prime members have access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which allows users to borrow certain popular Kindle e-books for free reading on Kindle hardware, up to one book a month, with no due date.[161]

In March 2014, Amazon announced an increase in the annual membership fee for Amazon Prime, from $79 to $99.[156][162] Shortly after this change, Amazon announced Prime Music, a service whose members can get unlimited, ad-free streaming of over a million songs and access to curated playlists.[163] In November 2014, Amazon added Prime Photos, which allows unlimited photo storage in the users' Amazon cloud drive.[164] In March 2015, Amazon is expanding that service as a paid offering to cover other kinds of content, and to users outside of its loyalty program. Unlimited Cloud Storage will let users get either unlimited photo storage or “unlimited everything” — covering all kinds of media from videos and music through to PDF documents — respectively for $11.99 or $59.99 per year.[165] Amazon also began offering free same-day delivery to Prime members in 14 U.S. metropolitan areas in May 2015.[166]

In April 2015, Amazon started a partnership with Audi and DHL in order to get deliveries on the trunk of Audi cars. This project is only available on the Munich (Germany) area to some Audi connected car users.[167]

On July 15, 2015 to commemorate their 20th birthday, Amazon celebrated "Amazon Prime Day" which Amazon announced would feature deals for prime members that rivaled those on Black Friday.[168] Also that month Amazon Prime announced[169] that it would be signing Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May of BBC's Top Gear to begin working on a new car series due to be released in 2016.

In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content over "Whispernet", via Sprint's EV-DO wireless network. The screen uses E Inktechnology to reduce battery consumption and to provide a more legible display. As of July 2014, there are over 2.7 million titles available for purchase at the Kindle Store.[170]

In September 2011, Amazon announced its entry into thetablet computer market by introducing the Kindle Fire, which runs a customized version of the operating system Android. The low pricing of Fire ($199 USD)[171] was widely perceived as a strategy backed by Amazon's revenue from its content sales, to be stimulated by sales of the Fire.

In September 2012, Amazon unveiled the second generation tablet, called the Kindle Fire HD. On September 25, 2013, Amazon.com unveiled its third generation tablet, called theKindle Fire HDX.[172] In October 2013, the sixth generation Kindle was released.

In April 2014, Amazon announced its Amazon Fire TV set-top box system, a device targeted to compete with such systems like Apple TV or Google's Chromecast device. The Amazon set-top box allows for streaming videos from sites like Amazon's own streaming service as well as others such as Netflix or Hulu. The device also supports voice search for movies, as well as gaming, which includes special versions of Minecraft, Asphalt 8, andThe Walking Dead.[173][174] Amazon announced the Fire TV Stick in October 2014. The device replicates much of the functionality of the Fire TV.[175]

The company entered the smartphone market in July 2014 with the release of the Fire Phone.[176]

Amazon's Honor System was launched in 2001 to allow customers to make donations or buy digital content, with Amazon collecting a percentage of the payment plus a fee; however, the service was discontinued in 2008[177] and replaced by Amazon Payments.

Amazon Music, its own online music store, launched as Amazon MP3 in the US on September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management.[178] (In addition to copyright law, Amazon's terms of use agreements restrict use of the MP3s, but Amazon does not use digital rights management (DRM) to enforce those terms.)[179] In addition to independent music labels, Amazon MP3 primarily sells music from the "Big 4" record labels: EMI, Universal, Warner Bros. Records, and Sony Music. Prior to the launch of this service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a music store with a variable pricing model based on demand.[180] Amazon MP3 was the first online offering of DRM-free music from all four major record companies.[181][182][183][184]

In January 2008, Amazon began distributing its MP3 service to subsidiary websites worldwide[185] and, in December 2008, Amazon MP3 was made available in the UK. At the launch of Amazon MP3 in the UK, over 3 million Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free songs were made available to consumers, with prices that started at 59p, compared to Apple's 79p starting price.[186]

In July 2010, Amazon announced that e-book sales for its Kindle reader outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010. Amazon claims that, during that period, 143 e-books were sold for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no digital edition; and during late June and early July, sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcovers.[187]

On March 22, 2011, Amazon launched the Amazon Appstore for Android devices and the service was made available in over 200 countries.[188] Also in 2011, Amazon announced that it was releasing a Mac download store to offer dozens of games and hundreds of pieces of software for Apple computers.[189]

In January 2013, Amazon launched AutoRip, a digital music service. The service allows customers to receive a free MP3 copy of select CDs purchased through Amazon.[190]Amazon announced in September 2013 that it would launch Kindle MatchBook in October 2013, a similar service for books allowing customers who buy books from Amazon to acquire an e-book copy for free, or at a discounted price of US$3 or less.[191] MatchBook was launched on the company's site on October 29, 2013.[192][193]

In October 2008, Amazon acquired game developer and distributor Reflexive Entertainment.[194] This studio continued to develop games for PC, Mac and Kindle eReaders under the brands Reflexive and Amazon Digital Services. Notable titles include Every Word for Kindle Paperwhite and Airport Mania for Kindle Fire, Android, iOS Windows and Mac.

In August 2012, Amazon announced it would be adding a gaming department to its company titled Amazon Game Studios. Amazon stated that it would introduce "innovative, fun and well-crafted games" to consumers.[195] According to the Amazon Game Studios website, the last game that was launched by the department was Amazon's first ever mobile game Air Patriots, released on November 1, 2012.[196]

On February 6, 2014, Amazon confirmed the acquisition of the gaming company Double Helix Games without any indication of the financial terms. The 75 Double Helix employees were to become Amazon employees and their Orange County, California, headquarters was to remain their operating base. Amazon informed the TechCrunch media company that it "acquired Double Helix as part of our [Amazon's] ongoing commitment to build innovative games for customers" and confirmed that Double Helix's current game roster and other future developments will receive support following the acquisition.[197]

On August 25, 2014, Amazon announced its intent to acquire the video game streaming website Twitch for $970 million.[198][199][200] The acquisition of Twitch is expected to help Amazon drive Internet traffic and potentially boost its Prime membership program, and promote its video ad and Fire TV set top box business.[201]

In August 2013 Amazon launched Amazon Art as an online marketplace selling original and limited edition fine art from selected galleries.[202] The initial 40000 items listed for sale included Norman Rockwell's painting Willie Gillis: Package from Home priced at $4.85 million, L'Enfant a la tasse by Claude Monet for $1.45 million and Andy Warhol's Sachikofor $45 000.[203]

Amazon Video is an Internet video on demand service by Amazon in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Austria and Germany. There are plans to offer the video streaming service in India sometime in 2015.[204]

In 2015, the Prime Instant Video exclusive series Transparent earned two Golden Globe Awards, and Transparent is the first series from a streaming service to win a Golden Globe for best series.[7]

In August 2005,[205] Amazon began selling products under its own private label, "Pinzon"; the trademark applications indicated that the label would be used for textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods.[205] In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a more diverse list of goods and to register a new design consisting of the "word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter "O" which appears at the "one o'clock" position".[206] Coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry.[206] In September 2008, Amazon filed to have the name registered. USPTO has finished its review of the application, but Amazon has yet to receive an official registration for the name.

AmazonBasics is a private-label product line, mainly consisting of consumer electronics accessories, but also including home and office accessories.[207] The line was launched in 2009.[208]

An Amazon.com exclusive is a product, usually a DVD, that is available exclusively on Amazon.com. Some DVDs are produced by the owner of the film or product, while others are produced by Amazon.com itself. The DVDs produced by Amazon are made using its "CreateSpace" program, in which DVDs are created, upon ordering, using DVD-R technology. The DVDs are then shipped about two days later. Some DVDs (such as theJersey Shore Season 1 or The Unusuals Season 1) are released first as an Amazon.com exclusive for a limited time before being released elsewhere. On May 23, 2011, Amazon.com allowed customers to download Lady Gaga's Born This Way album for 99 cents, resulting in some downloads being delayed, due to an extremely high volume of downloads.[209]

Amazon self publishing services through one of its companies, CreateSpace, a member of the Amazon group of companies.[210]

AWS Summit 2013 event in NYC.

Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, which provides programmatic access to latent features on its website.

In November 2005, Amazon began testing Amazon Mechanical Turk, an application programming interface (API) allowing programs to dispatch tasks to human processors.

In March 2006, Amazon launched an online storage service called Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). An unlimited number of data objects, from 1 byte to 5 terabytes in size, can be stored in S3 and distributed viaHTTP or BitTorrent. The service charges monthly fees for data stored and transferred. In 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), a distributed queue messaging service, and product wikis (later folded into Amapedia) and discussion forums for certain products using guidelines that follow standard message boardconventions.

Also in 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a virtual site farm,[211] allowing users to use the Amazon infrastructure to run applications ranging from running simulations to web hosting. In 2008, Amazon improved the service by adding Elastic Block Store (EBS), offering persistent storage for Amazon EC2 instances andElastic IP addresses, and offering static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing. Amazon introduced SimpleDB, a database system, allowing users of its other infrastructure to utilize a high-reliability, high-performance database system. In 2008, Amazon graduated EC2 from beta to "Generally Available" and added support for theMicrosoft Windows platform.[212]

Amazon continues to refine and add services to AWS, adding such services as Scalable DNS service (Amazon Route 53), payment handling, and AWS specific APIs for itsMechanical Turk service.

In August 2012, Amazon announced Amazon Glacier, a low-cost online file storage web service that provides reliable data archiving, storage, and backup.[213]

In November 2012 at AWS' web developer conference in Las Vegas it announced it was targeting large companies as cloud storage clients. It will further cut its S3 prices to customers with long-term contracts in its "Redshift" storage service launching in 2013.

In March 2013 Amazon announced its Mobile Ads API for developers. The new Ads API can be used on apps distributed on any Android platform as long as the app is also available on Amazon’s Appstore.[214]

As of December 2014, Amazon Web Services operated 1.4 Million servers across 11 regions and 28 availability zones.[215]

This article needs additional citations for verification.Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2015)

Amazon Publishing is Amazon's publishing unit. It is composed of AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47 North, and Powered by Amazon. Additional imprints are planned.

Launched in 2005, Amazon Shorts offered exclusive short stories and non-fiction pieces from best-selling authors for immediate download. By June 2007, the program had over 1,700 pieces and was adding about 50 new pieces per week. The program was discontinued on June 1, 2010.

Amazon also created "channels" to benefit certain causes. In 2004, Amazon allowed customers to donate $5 to $200 to the campaigns of 2004 US presidential hopefuls, providing links that raised $300,000 for the candidates.[216] Amazon has periodically reactivated a Red Cross donation channel after crises such as Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. By January 2005, nearly 200,000 people had donated over $15.7 million in the US.[217]

Amazon Smile, accessed by going to smile.amazon.com when normally shopping, allows Amazon to donate 0.5% of the sale price to a selected charity as its sponsor.[218]

Amazon Local is a daily deal service launched in June 2011 in Boise, Idaho.[219] As of 2013, Amazon Local offers daily deals to over 100 regions in 36 U.S. states. Amazon Local also acts as a deal aggregator; some of the deals are actually offered through LivingSocial, a firm in which Amazon has heavily invested.[220]

It was launched gradually in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2012, starting in London and expanding to more towns and cities.[221]

In July 2009, Amazon.com launched an AmazonWireless website,[222] which offers cellular devices and service plans for Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile in the US.[223]

AmazonFresh is a home grocery delivery service first trialed in 2007, and later made available in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, California, San Diego, Brooklyn, New York and Philadelphia, PA.[224]

Amazon Prime Pantry is a similar service covering the 48 contiguous United States, allowing the order of up to 45 pounds of dry goods and non-perishable groceries for a flat delivery fee.

On March 31, 2015, Amazon.com announced that it was expanding Amazon Dash to include an Amazon Dash Button and a Dash Replenishment Service.[225]

60 Minutes announced on December 1, 2013 that Amazon Prime Air was a possible futuredelivery service expected to be in development for several more years. In concept, the process would use drones to deliver small packages (less than five pounds) within 30 minutes by flying short distances (10–20 km) from local Amazon Fulfillment Centers.[226][227] In the U.S., the project will require the Federal Aviation Administration to approve commercial use of unmanned drones.[228]

Such approval could be in place as early as 2015, and Amazon expects to be ready at that time.[229][230] In July 2014, it was revealed the company was developing its 8th and 9th drone prototypes, some that could fly 50 miles an hour and carry 5-pound packages, and had applied to the FAA to test them.[231]

In December 2014, Amazon announced that as a benefit to Prime members, parts ofManhattan, in New York City, could get products delivered to them within one hour for a fee of $7.99, or within two hours for no additional fee. 25,000 daily essential products are available with this delivery service.[232] In February 2015, this service was extended to include all of Manhattan.[233] It has since been expanded to include parts of Miami,Baltimore, Dallas, Atlanta, Austin, San Antonio, TX domestically,[234][235][236] and internationally to London[237] and Birmingham, UK.[238]

Amazon Supply, launched in 2012, offers industrial and scientific components andMaintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) supplies.[67] Amazon Supply was developed based on experience operating Smallparts.com, acquired in 2005. (The Smallparts.com brand was discontinued with the launch of Amazon Supply.) While Amazon Supply uses the same order fulfillment and distribution system as Amazon.com, its online retailer services customers in over 220 countries worldwide.[239]

An Amazon.com collection point at the White Rose Centre in Leeds,England.

In January 2007, Amazon launched Amapedia, a now-defunct wiki for user-generated content to replace ProductWiki, and the video on demandservice Amazon Unbox.[240] Also in 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Vine, which allows reviewers free access to prerelease products from vendors in return for posting a review, as well as a payment service specifically targeted at developers, Amazon FPS.[citation needed]

IMDb and Amazon launched a website called SoundUnwound for browsing music metadata with wiki-like user contribution in September 2007; this data was also used for Amazon's Artist Pages.[241] Soundunwound ceased existence on June 18, 2012, and the site redirected to Amazon.

Amazon Connect enables authors to post remarks on their book pages to customers.

Amazon Webstore allows businesses to create custom e-commerce websites using Amazon technology. Sellers can select the category ( and keywords) for their business, and pay a commission of 1-2%, plus credit-card processing fees and fraud protection, and a subscription fee which ranges from $0 to $39.99 per month depending on the bundle option for an unlimited number of listings.[242] Amazon has chosen very few companies to become an implementation solution provider: They are Qlick Cart, 4C Media, Absolute Webstores,atmosol, eCatalog, Explore Consulting, GoWebBaby, Kaushalam, KLoc Technologies,Luxor Design, SynapseIndia, and V Group. These companies encourage traders to have their own webstore with easy guidance and solutions.[243]

In August 2014, Amazon launched a credit card reader. Merchants can use it to conduct payments through a smartphone or tablet.[244]

In 2014, Amazon launched a feature called "make an offer" that allows customers to place a bid to 3rd party sellers, rather than buy outright. However, unlike eBay, the feature is not an auction but rather a one-to-one bid where the customer haggles privately with the seller.[245]

In January 2015, Amazon announced its own email and scheduling service dubbed WorkMail developed by Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing unit of Amazon Inc. The Amazon email service is expected to bring in $10 billion extra revenue to the company.[246]

In March 2015, Amazon launched a new on-demand service, Amazon Home Services for all sorts of housework.[247]

In April 2015, Amazon rolled out a new travel site called Amazon Destinations, which focuses on helping customers find "getaway destinations" within driving distance of their homes. Currently Amazon Destinations features hotel selections in three U.S. metro areas: L.A., New York and Seattle.[248]

In October 2015, Amazon announced a new handmade marketplace called Handmade By Amazon, already having 5,000 sellers from 60 countries and 80,000 items for sale. The platform is designed for artisans to sell their good directly to the public, similar to the platform Etsy.[249]