Amazon (company)

amazon.com
	Logo since January 2000
	Screenshot Homepage
Type of site	E-commerce
Available in	Arabic; Chinese; Dutch; English; French; German; Hindi; Italian; Japanese; Polish; Portuguese; Spanish; Swedish; Turkish;
Owner	Amazon
Website	amazon.com (original U.S. site)
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Launched	1995; 29 years ago
Current status	Active
Written in	C++ and Java

Amazon Corporation
	Doppler building, Amazon's headquarters in Seattle
Trade name	Amazon
Formerly	Cadabra, Inc. (1994–1995); Amazon.com, Inc. (1995-2025)
Company type	Public
Traded as	Nasdaq: AMZN; Nasdaq-100 component; S&P 100 component; S&P 500 component;
ISIN	US0231351067
Industry	Conglomerate;
Founded	July 5, 1994; 29 years ago; Bellevue, Washington, U.S.
Founder	Jeff Bezos
Headquarters	Seattle, Washington and Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jeff Bezos; (chairman); Andy Jassy; (president and CEO);
Products	Echo; Fire Tablet; Fire TV; Fire OS; Ice; Kindle;
Services	Amazon.com; Amazon Alexa; Amazon Appstore; Amazon Luna; Amazon Music; Amazon Pay; Amazon Prime; Amazon Prime Video; Twitch; Ring; Amazon Web Services;
Revenue	US$513.98 billion (2022)
Operating income	US$12.25 billion (2022)
Net income	US$−2.72 billion (2022)
Total assets	US$462.68 billion (2022)
Total equity	US$146.04 billion (2022)
Owner	Jeff Bezos (9.8%)
Number of employees	1,541,000 (December 2022); U.S.: 950,000 (June 2021);
Divisions	Amazon Consumer; Amazon Entertainment; Amazon Interactive; Amazon Audio Group; Amazon Publishing; Amazon Robotics; Amazon Logistics; Amazon Healthcare;
Subsidiaries	Amazon Lab126; AWS; Digital Photography Review;
Website	Template:Www.amazon.com

Amazon Corporation (previously incorporated as Amazon.com, Inc.) (/ˈæməzɒn/ AM-ə-zon) is an American multinational technology and media conglomerate focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been often referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", It is often considered as one of the Big Five American technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Apple, Meta (formerly Facebook Inc.) 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), and 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 "aggressive" reinvestment of profits into capital expenditures. As of 2023^[update], 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. It is the world's most valuable companies. Amazon is the second largest technology company by revenue.

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, its film and television division, Amazon Studios has been the owner of film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer since March 2022, and the owner of the largest library of children's television programming and animation studio WildBrain since April 2024. It also produces consumer electronics—most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, Ice smartphones, and Fire TVs.

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

History[edit]

1994–2006: early years[edit]

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–present: growth[edit]

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.

2021-present: diversification into mass media[edit]

Products and services[edit]

Amazon.com [edit]

Amazon.com is an ecommerce platform that sells many product lines, including media (books, movies, music, and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal care products, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items, toys and games, and farm supplies and consulting services. Amazon websites are country-specific (for example, amazon.com for the U.S. and amazon.fr for France), though some offer international shipping.

Visits to amazon.com grew from 615 million annual visitors in 2008, to more than 2 billion per month in 2022. The ecommerce platform is the 14th most visited website in the world.

Results generated by Amazon's search engine are partly determined by promotional fees. The company's localized storefronts, which differ in selection and prices, are differentiated by top-level domain and country code:

Region	Country	Domain name	Since	Notes
Africa	Egypt	amazon.eg	Template:Sort	Formerly known as Souq.com Egypt
Americas	Brazil	amazon.com.br	Template:Sort
	Canada	amazon.ca	Template:Sort
	Mexico	amazon.com.mx	Template:Sort
	United States	amazon.com	Template:Sort
Asia	China	amazon.cn	Template:Sort	Formerly known as Joyo.com CHN
	India	amazon.in	Template:Sort
	Japan	amazon.co.jp	Template:Sort
	Saudi Arabia	amazon.sa	Template:Sort	Formerly known as Souq.com KSA
	Singapore	amazon.sg	Template:Sort
	Turkey	amazon.com.tr	Template:Sort
	United Arab Emirates	amazon.ae	Template:Sort	Formerly known as Souq.com UAE
Europe	Belgium	amazon.com.be	Template:Sort
	France	amazon.fr	Template:Sort
	Germany	amazon.de	Template:Sort
	Italy	amazon.it	Template:Sort
	Netherlands	amazon.nl	Template:Sort	Books & e-books (plus readers) only, full shop per March 2020
	Poland	amazon.pl	Template:Sort
	Spain	amazon.es	Template:Sort
	Sweden	amazon.se	Template:Sort
	United Kingdom	amazon.co.uk	Template:Sort
Oceania	Australia	amazon.com.au	Template:Sort

Merchant partnerships[edit]

In 2000, U.S. toy retailer Toys "R" Us entered into a 10-year agreement with Amazon, valued at $50 million per year plus a cut of sales, under which Toys "R" Us would be the exclusive supplier of toys and baby products on the service, and the chain's website would redirect to Amazon's Toys & Games category. In 2004, Toys "R" Us sued Amazon, claiming that because of a perceived lack of variety in Toys "R" Us stock, Amazon had knowingly allowed third-party sellers to offer items on the service in categories that Toys "R" Us had been granted exclusivity. In 2006, a court ruled in favor of Toys "R" Us, giving it the right to unwind its agreement with Amazon and establish its independent e-commerce website. The company was later awarded $51 million in damages.

In 2001, Amazon entered into a similar agreement with Borders Group, under which Amazon would comanage Borders.com as a co-branded service. Borders pulled out of the arrangement in 2007, with plans to also launch its own online store.

On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves.

In November 2013, Amazon announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to begin delivering orders on Sundays. The service, included in Amazon's standard shipping rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York because of the high-volume and inability to deliver in a timely way, with plans to expand into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix by 2014.

In June 2017, Nike agreed to sell products through Amazon in exchange for better policing of counterfeit goods. This proved unsuccessful and Nike withdrew from the partnership in November 2019. Companies including IKEA and Birkenstock also stopped selling through Amazon around the same time, citing similar frustrations over business practices and counterfeit goods.

In September 2017, Amazon ventured with one of its sellers JV Appario Retail owned by Patni Group which has recorded a total income of US$ 104.44 million (₹759 crore) in financial year 2017–2018.

As of October 11, 2017^[update], AmazonFresh sold a range of Booths branded products for home delivery in selected areas.

In November 2018, Amazon reached an agreement with Apple Inc. to sell selected products through the service, via the company and selected Apple Authorized Resellers. As a result of this partnership, only Apple Authorized Resellers may sell Apple products on Amazon effective January 4, 2019.

Private-label products[edit]

Amazon sells many products under its own brand names, including phone chargers, batteries, and diaper wipes. The AmazonBasics brand was introduced in 2009, and now features hundreds of product lines, including smartphone cases, computer mice, batteries, dumbbells, and dog crates. Amazon owned 34 private-label brands as of 2019. These brands account for 0.15% of Amazon's global sales, whereas the average for other large retailers is 18%. Other Amazon retail brands include Presto!, Mama Bear, and Amazon Essentials.

Third-party sellers[edit]

Amazon derives many of its sales (around 40% in 2008) from third-party sellers who sell products on Amazon. Some other large e-commerce sellers use Amazon to sell their products in addition to selling them through their websites. The sales are processed through Amazon.com and end up at individual sellers for processing and order fulfillment and Amazon leases space for these retailers. Small sellers of used and new goods go to Amazon Marketplace to offer goods at a fixed price.

Affiliate program[edit]

Publishers can signup as affiliates and receive a commission for referring customers to Amazon by placing links to Amazon on their websites if the referral results in a sale. Worldwide, Amazon has "over 900,000 members" in its affiliate programs. In the middle of 2014, the Amazon Affiliate Program is used by 1.2% of all websites and it is the second most popular advertising network after Google Ads. It is frequently used by websites and non-profits to provide a way for supporters to earn them a commission.

Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. A new affiliate product, aStore, allows Associates to embed a subset of Amazon products within another website, or linked to another website. In June 2010, Amazon Seller Product Suggestions was launched to provide more transparency to sellers by recommending specific products to third-party sellers to sell on Amazon. Products suggested are based on customers' browsing history.

Product reviews[edit]

Amazon allows users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. Reviewers must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon provides a badging option for reviewers which indicates the real name of the reviewer (based on confirmation of a credit card account) or which indicates that the reviewer is one of the top reviewers by popularity. As of December 16, 2020, Amazon removed the ability of sellers and customers to comment on product reviews and purged their websites of all posted product review comments. In an email to sellers Amazon gave its rationale for removing this feature: "... the comments feature on customer reviews was rarely used." The remaining review response options are to indicate whether the reader finds the review helpful or to report that it violates Amazon policies (abuse). If a review is given enough "helpful" hits, it appears on the front page of the product. In 2010, Amazon was reported as being the largest single source of Internet consumer reviews.

When publishers asked Bezos why Amazon would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that Amazon.com was "taking a different approach ... we want to make every book available—the good, the bad and the ugly ... to let truth loose".

There have been cases of positive reviews being written and posted by public relations companies on behalf of their clients and instances of writers using pseudonyms to leave negative reviews of their rivals' works

Amazon sales rank[edit]

The Amazon sales rank (ASR) indicates the popularity of a product sold on any Amazon locale. It is a relative indicator of popularity that is updated hourly. Effectively, it is a "best sellers list" for the millions of products stocked by Amazon. While the ASR has no direct effect on the sales of a product, it is used by Amazon to determine which products to include in its bestsellers lists. Products that appear in these lists enjoy additional exposure on the Amazon website and this may lead to an increase in sales. In particular, products that experience large jumps (up or down) in their sales ranks may be included within Amazon's lists of "movers and shakers"; such a listing provides additional exposure that might lead to an increase in sales. For competitive reasons, Amazon does not release actual sales figures to the public. However, Amazon has now begun to release point of sale data via the Nielsen BookScan service to verified authors. While the ASR has been the source of much speculation by publishers, manufacturers, and marketers, Amazon itself does not release the details of its sales rank calculation algorithm. Some companies have analyzed Amazon sales data to generate sales estimates based on the ASR, though Amazon states:

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Physical stores[edit]

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[edit]

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.

Divisions and Subsidiaries[edit]

Amazon owns over 40 subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services, Audible, Diapers.com, Goodreads, IMDb, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Shopbop, Teachstreet, Twitch, Zappos, and Zoox.

Amazon Consumer[edit]

Amazon Web Services[edit]

Amazon Entertainment[edit]

Amazon Sport[edit]

Amazon Interactive[edit]

Amazon Audio Group[edit]

Amazon Publishing[edit]

Amazon Brands[edit]

Amazon Robotics[edit]

Amazon Healthcare[edit]

Operations[edit]

Logistics[edit]

Amazon uses many different transportation services to deliver packages. Amazon-branded services include:

Amazon Air, a cargo airline for bulk transport, with last-mile delivery handled either by Amazon Flex, Amazon Logistics, or the U.S. Postal Service.
Amazon Flex, a smartphone app that enables individuals to act as independent contractors, delivering packages to customers from personal vehicles without uniforms. Deliveries include one or two hours Prime Now, same or next day Amazon Fresh groceries, and standard Amazon.com orders, in addition to orders from local stores that contract with Amazon.
Amazon Logistics, in which Amazon contracts with small businesses (which it calls "Delivery Service Partners") to perform deliveries to customers. Each business has a fleet of approximately 20–40 Amazon-branded vans, and employees of the contractors wear Amazon uniforms. As of December 2020, it operates in the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Amazon Prime Air is an experimental drone delivery service.

Amazon directly employs people to work at its warehouses, bulk distribution centers, staffed "Amazon Hub Locker+" locations, and delivery stations where drivers pick up packages. As of December 2020, it is not hiring delivery drivers as employees.

Rakuten Intelligence estimated that in 2020 in the United States, the proportion of last-mile deliveries was 56% by Amazon's directly contracted services (mostly in urban areas), 30% by the U.S. Postal Service (mostly in rural areas), and 14% by UPS. In April 2021, Amazon reported to investors it had increased its in-house delivery capacity by 50% in the last 12 months (which included the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States).

Supply chain[edit]

Amazon first launched its distribution network in 1997 with two fulfillment centers in Seattle and New Castle, Delaware. Amazon has several types of distribution facilities consisting of cross-dock centers, fulfillment centers, sortation centers, delivery stations, Prime now hubs, and Prime air hubs. There are 75 fulfillment centers and 25 sortation centers with over 125,000 employees. Employees are responsible for five basic tasks: unpacking and inspecting incoming goods; placing goods in storage and recording their location; picking goods from their computer recorded locations to make up an individual shipment; sorting and packing orders; and shipping. A computer that records the location of goods and maps out routes for pickers plays a key role: employees carry hand-held computers which communicate with the central computer and monitor their rate of progress. Some warehouses are partially automated with systems built by Amazon Robotics.

In September 2006, Amazon launched a program called FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) whereby it could handle storage, packing and distribution of products and services for small sellers.

Amazon.fr fulfillment center in Lauwin-Planque, France
Amazon.es fulfillment center in San Fernando de Henares, Spain
Amazon.co.uk fulfillment center in Glenrothes, Scotland, UK
Amazon.de fulfillment center in Graben, Germany
Amazon.co.jp fulfillment center in Ichikawa, Japan
Amazon fulfillment center in Macon, Georgia, U.S.

Corporate affairs[edit]

Board of directors[edit]

As of June 2022^[update], Amazon's board of directors were:

Jeff Bezos, executive chairman, Amazon.com, Inc.
Andy Jassy, president and CEO, Amazon.com, Inc.
Keith B. Alexander, CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, former NSA director
Edith W. Cooper, co-founder of Medley and former EVP of Goldman Sachs
Jamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
Daniel P. Huttenlocher, dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Judy McGrath, former CEO, MTV Networks
Indra Nooyi, former CEO, PepsiCo
Jon Rubinstein, former chairman and CEO, Palm, Inc.
Patty Stonesifer, president and CEO, Martha's Table
Wendell P. Weeks, chairman, president and CEO, Corning Inc.

Finances[edit]

Amazon.com is primarily a retail site with a sales revenue model; Amazon takes a small percentage of the sale price of each item that is sold through its website while also allowing companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured products. As of 2018^[update], Amazon.com is ranked eighth on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

For the fiscal year 2021, Amazon reported earnings of US$33.36 billion, with an annual revenue of US$469.82 billion, an increase of 21.7% over the previous fiscal cycle. Since 2007 sales increased from 14.835 billion to 469.822 billion, due to continued business expansion.

Amazon's market capitalization went over US$1 trillion again in early February 2020 after the announcement of the fourth quarter 2019 results.

Year	Revenue in mil. US$	Net income in mil. US$	Total Assets in mil. US$	Employees
1995	0.5	−0.3	1.1
1996	16	−6	8
1997	148	−28	149	614
1998	610	−124	648	2,100
1999	1,639	−720	2,466	7,600
2000	2,761	−1,411	2,135	9,000
2001	3,122	−567	1,638	7,800
2002	3,932	−149	1,990	7,500
2003	5,263	35	2,162	7,800
2004	6,921	588	3,248	9,000
2005	8,490	359	3,696	12,000
2006	10,711	190	4,363	13,900
2007	14,835	476	6,485	17,000
2008	19,166	645	8,314	20,700
2009	24,509	902	13,813	24,300
2010	34,204	1,152	18,797	33,700
2011	48,077	631	25,278	56,200
2012	61,093	−39	32,555	88,400
2013	74,452	274	40,159	117,300
2014	88,988	−241	54,505	154,100
2015	107,006	596	64,747	230,800
2016	135,987	2,371	83,402	341,400
2017	177,866	3,033	131,310	566,000
2018	232,887	10,073	162,648	647,500
2019	280,522	11,588	225,248	798,000
2020	386,064	21,331	321,195	1,298,000
2021	469,822	33,364	420,549	1,608,000
2022	513,983	−2,722	462,675	1,541,000

Corporate culture[edit]

During his tenure, Jeff Bezos had become renowned for his annual shareholder letters, which have gained similar notability to those of Warren Buffett. These annual letters gave an "invaluable window" into the famously "secretive" company, and revealed Bezos's perspectives and strategic focus. A common theme of these letters is Bezos's desire to instill customer-centricity (in his words, "customer obsession") at all levels of Amazon, notably by making all senior executives field customer support queries for a short time at Amazon call centers. He also read many emails addressed by customers to his public email address. One of Bezos's most well-known internal memos was his mandate for "all teams" to "expose their data and functionality" through service interfaces "designed from the ground up to be externalizable". This process, commonly known as a service-oriented architecture (SOA), resulted in mandatory dogfooding of services that would later be commercialized as part of AWS.

Lobbying[edit]

Amazon lobbies the United States federal government and state governments on multiple issues such as the enforcement of sales taxes on online sales, transportation safety, privacy and data protection and intellectual property. According to regulatory filings, Amazon.com focuses its lobbying on the United States Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Reserve. Amazon.com spent roughly $3.5 million, $5 million and $9.5 million on lobbying, in 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. In 2019, it spent $16.8 million and had a team of 104 lobbyists.

Amazon.com was a corporate member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) until it dropped membership following protests at its shareholders' meeting on May 24, 2012.

In 2014, Amazon expanded its lobbying practices as it prepared to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration to approve its drone delivery program, hiring the Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld lobbying firm in June. Amazon and its lobbyists have visited with Federal Aviation Administration officials and aviation committees in Washington, D.C. to explain its plans to deliver packages. In September 2020 this moved one step closer with the granting of a critical certificate by the FAA.

Criticism[edit]

Amazon has attracted criticism for its actions, including: supplying law enforcement with facial recognition surveillance tools; forming cloud computing partnerships with the CIA; leading customers away from bookshops; adversely impacting the environment; placing a low priority on warehouse conditions for workers; actively opposing unionization efforts; remotely deleting content purchased by Amazon Kindle users; taking public subsidies; seeking to patent its 1-Click technology; engaging in anti-competitive actions and price discrimination;Template:Cite magazine Criticism has also concerned various decisions over whether to censor or publish content such as the WikiLeaks website, works containing libel and material facilitating dogfight, cockfight, or pedophile activities. In December 2011, Amazon faced a backlash from small businesses for running a one-day deal to promote its new Price Check app. Shoppers who used the app to check prices in a brick-and-mortar store were offered a 5% discount to purchase the same item from Amazon. Companies like Groupon, eBay and Taap.it countered Amazon's promotion by offering $10 off from their products.

The company has also faced accusations of putting undue pressure on suppliers to maintain and extend its profitability. One effort to squeeze the most vulnerable book publishers was known within the company as the Gazelle Project, after Bezos suggested, according to Brad Stone, "that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle." In 2019, Amazon banned selling skin-lightening and racist products that might affect the consumer's health. In 2022, a lawsuit filed by state attorney-general Letitia James was dismissed by the New York state court of appeals.

External links[edit]

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