Amazon (company)

Amazon Corporation (previously incorporated as Amazon.com, Inc.) is an American multinational technology, retail, and media conglomerate based in Seattle, Washington, that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is considered one of the Big Five technology companies along with Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.

Amazon is known for its disruption of well-established industries through technological innovation and mass scale. It is the world's largest e-commerce marketplace, AI assistant provider, and cloud computing platform as measured by revenue and market capitalization. Amazon is the largest Internet company by revenue in the world. It is the second largest private employer in the United States and one of the world's most valuable companies. Amazon is the second largest technology company by revenue.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994, in Bellevue, Washington. The company initially started as an online marketplace for books but later expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion, which vastly increased Amazon's presence as a brick-and-mortar retailer. In 2018, Bezos announced that its two-day delivery service, Amazon Prime, had surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.

Amazon distributes downloads and streaming of video, music, audiobook through its Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Audible subsidiaries. Amazon also has a publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, a film and television studio, Amazon Studios, and a cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services. It produces consumer electronics including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo devices. In addition, Amazon subsidiaries also include Ring, Twitch.tv, Whole Foods Market, and IMDb. Among various controversies, the company has been criticized for technological surveillance overreach, a hyper-competitive and demanding work culture, tax avoidance, and anti-competitive practices.

1994–2006: early years
Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos, who chose the Seattle area for its abundance of technical talent, as Microsoft was in the area.

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 music, video games, consumer electronics, home improvement items, software, games, and toys.

In 2002, it launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which initially focused on providing APIs for web developers to build web applications on top of Amazon's ecommerce platform. In 2004, AWS was expanded to provide website popularity statistics and web crawler data from the Alexa Web Information Service. AWS later shifted toward providing enterprise services with Simple Storage Service (S3) in 2006, and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in 2008, allowing companies to rent data storage and computing power from Amazon. In 2006, Amazon also launched the Fulfillment by Amazon program, which allowed individuals and small companies (called "third-party sellers") to sell products through Amazon's warehouses and fulfillment infrastructure.

2007–2021: growth
Amazon purchased the Whole Foods Market supermarket chain in 2017. It is the leading e-retailer in the United States with approximately US$178 billion net sales in 2017. It has over 300 million active customer accounts globally.

Amazon saw large growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring more than 100,000 staff in the United States and Canada. Some Amazon workers in the US, France, and Italy protested the company's decision to "run normal shifts" due to COVID-19's ease of spread in warehouses. In Spain, the company faced legal complaints over its policies, while a group of US Senators wrote an open letter to Bezos expressing concerns about workplace safety.

On February 2, 2021, Bezos announced that would step down as CEO to become executive chair of Amazon's board. The transition officially took place on July 5, 2021, with former CEO of AWS Andy Jassy replacing him as CEO. In January 2023, Amazon cut over 18,000 jobs, primarily in consumer retail and its human resources division in an attempt to cut costs.

Amazon.com
The domain amazon.com attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by 2008. Amazon attracts over 130 million customers to its US website per month by the start of 2016. The company has also invested heavily on a massive amount of server capacity for its website, especially to handle the excessive traffic during the December Christmas holiday season.

Results generated by Amazon's search engine are partly determined by promotional fees.

Amazon's localized storefronts, which differ in selection and prices, are differentiated by top-level domain and country code:

Physical stores
In November 2015, Amazon opened a physical Amazon Books store in University Village in Seattle. The store is 5,500 square feet and prices for all products match those on its website. Amazon opened its tenth physical book store in 2017; media speculation suggests that Amazon plans to eventually roll out 300 to 400 bookstores around the country.

In June 2018, it was reported that Amazon planned to open brick and mortar bookstores in Germany.

In August 2019, Amazon applied to have a liquor store in San Francisco, CA as a means to ship beer and alcohol within the city.

In 2020, Amazon Fresh opened several physical stores in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Hardware and services
Amazon has a number of products and services available, including its digital assistant Alexa, Amazon Music and Prime Video for music and videos respectively, the Amazon Appstore for Android apps, and its Kindle hardware line of e-readers and tablets. Audible provides audiobooks for purchase and listening.

In September 2021, Amazon announced the launch of Astro, its first household robot, powered by its Alexa smart home technology. This can be remote-controlled when not at home, to check on pets, people, or home security. It will send owners a notification if it detects something unusual.

In January 2023, Amazon announced the launch of RXPass, a prescription drug delivery service. It allows US Amazon Prime members to pay a $5 monthly fee for access to 60 medications. The service was launched immediately after the announcement except in states with specific prescription delivery requirements. Beneficiaries of government healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid will not be able to sign up for RXPass.

Board of directors
As of May 2018, the board of directors is:
 * Jeff Bezos, President, CEO, and Chairman
 * Tom Alberg, Managing partner, Madrona Venture Group
 * John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California
 * Jamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale, and Dorr
 * Daniel P. Huttenlocher, Dean and Vice Provost, Cornell University
 * Judy McGrath, former CEO, MTV Networks
 * Jon Rubinstein, former Chairman, and CEO, Palm, Inc.
 * Thomas O. Ryder, former Chairman, and CEO, Reader's Digest Association
 * Patty Stonesifer, President, and CEO, Martha's Table
 * Wendell P. Weeks, Chairman, President, and CEO, Corning Inc.