History Of Amazon

Samuel Chima
3 min readMay 2, 2023

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The history of Amazon began with Jeff Bezos, a computer science and electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University. After working at various jobs, Bezos joined the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, where he proposed a list of 20 products they could sell online, but the company rejected his proposal. Bezos decided to start his own company, and in 1995, he opened Amazon, an online bookstore. The company quickly became popular and expanded into other product categories.

in July 1995, Amazon began by selling books as a convenient and accessible option for readers everywhere. Amazon quickly became popular, generating $20,000 per week in sales within 30 days and employing 250 employees by the end of the year.

In 1997, Amazon went public with an IPO and raised $54 million which helped it expand into other product categories. which helped it expand further into other ventures such as AWS, the Kindle e-reader, and Amazon Prime.

In 2002, it launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing platform that allowed other companies to use Amazon’s infrastructure for their own services. This turned out to be a major business for Amazon and helped drive its growth in the 2000s.

Amazon eventually acquired and started subsidiary companies, such as IMDb, Audible, Zappos.com, Twitch, and Whole Foods Market, and developed Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006, a cloud computing company that hosts websites for customers and businesses.

AWS is now used by several companies, including Netflix and Facebook. The history of Amazon is marked by significant milestones such as the 1-Click Patent, which allows customers to make a purchase with a single click. Today, Amazon is the leading online retailer for anything, from pet accessories to trampolines, and it all started in Jeff Bezos’s garage in Seattle.

In 2007, Amazon launched the Kindle, an e-reader device that revolutionized the publishing industry and paved the way for the company’s expansion into digital media. Over the next few years, Amazon continued to innovate and expand, launching new services such as Amazon Prime, a subscription-based service that offers free shipping and a variety of other perks to members.

In 2013, Amazon launched a new service called Amazon Prime Air. This service aimed to revolutionize the delivery process by using drones to deliver packages to customers’ doorsteps within 30 minutes of placing an order. The service has yet to become fully operational due to regulatory hurdles, but Amazon continues to work on it.

Another significant milestone in Amazon’s history is the launch of the Amazon Echo, a smart speaker powered by Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa. The device was launched in 2014 and has since become a popular household item, allowing users to play music, get the weather forecast, control their smart home devices, and more, all through voice commands.

Today, Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. Jeff Bezos, who served as the company’s CEO for over two decades, stepped down from the role in July 2021, and was succeeded by Andy Jassy.

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