Amazon
An online store with its own delivery network, and the company that runs AWS.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, in Seattle, as an online bookstore. It grew into a store that sells almost everything, and most of what it sells today comes from independent sellers who list their products on Amazon's marketplace and pay fees for the sale, and often for Amazon to store and ship the goods. Behind the website sits one of the largest logistics networks in the world: warehouses, sorting centers, planes and delivery vans.
Several businesses grew around the store. Prime is a yearly or monthly membership with fast shipping, Prime Video and other perks, which keeps customers coming back. Amazon also sells ads inside its own store, so brands pay to appear first in search results, and makes devices such as the Kindle and the Echo speakers with the Alexa assistant.
The part that matters most in tech is AWS (Amazon Web Services). Amazon built huge computing infrastructure for its own store and, in 2006, started renting it to others: S3 for storage and EC2 for servers were among the first services. AWS became the largest cloud provider and, although it is a smaller share of Amazon's sales than the store, it brings in a large share of the company's profit. Many of the apps and websites you use every day run on it, and it is also a major investor in Anthropic.
Keep in mind
- Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Seattle, as an online bookstore.
- Most items in its store come from third-party sellers who pay Amazon fees.
- Prime, advertising and devices like Alexa grew around the store.
- AWS, launched in 2006, is the largest cloud provider and a big part of Amazon's profit.
