Amazon (company)

Amazon.com, Inc., known as Amazon (/ˈæməˌzɒn/), is an American multinational technology company focusing on selling things online, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is considered to be one of the Big Five American technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Apple, Meta and Microsoft.

Amazon.com, Inc.

Logo used from 2000
Trade name	Amazon
Formerly	Cadabra, Inc. (1994–95)
Company type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: AMZN NASDAQ-100 component S&P 100 component S&P 500 component
ISIN	US0231351067
Industry	Cloud computing e-commerce artificial intelligence consumer electronics digital distribution self-driving cars
Founded	July 5, 1994; 31 years ago (1994-07-05) Bellevue, Washington, U.S.
Founder	Jeff Bezos
Headquarters	Seattle, Washington and Arlington, Virginia , U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jeff Bezos (President, CEO, and Chairman) Andy Jassy (CEO-elect) Brian Olsavsky (Senior VP and CFO)
Products	Echo Fire Tablet Fire TV Fire OS Kindle
Services	Amazon.com[broken anchor] Amazon Alexa Amazon Appstore Amazon Music Amazon Prime Amazon Prime Video Amazon Web Services
Revenue	US$386.064 billion (2020)
Operating income	US$22.9 billion (2020)
Net income	US$21.331 billion (2020)
Total assets	US$321.2 billion (2020)
Total equity	US$93.404 billion (2020)
Number of employees	1,298,000 (Dec. 2020)[1] U.S.: 810,000 (Oct. 2020)[2]
Subsidiaries	A9.com AbeBooks Alexa Internet Amazon.com Services Amazon Air Amazon Books Amazon Fresh Amazon Game Studios Amazon Lab126 Amazon Logistics Amazon Pharmacy Amazon Publishing Amazon Robotics Amazon Studios AWS Audible Body Labs Book Depository ComiXology Digital Photography Review Goodreads Graphiq IMDb PillPack Ring Souq.com Twitch Interactive Whole Foods Market Woot Zappos
Website	amazon.com
Footnotes / references [1][3][4][5][6][7]

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. It started selling books online. Now it sells many things online, so it is sometimes called 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). The company owns 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.

On July 30, 2025, Amazon will pay the New York Times up to $25 million a year for the rights to its journalism content for AI model training, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Times will allow Amazon to use content from its daily journalism, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic for AI-related uses as part of the agreement.^[8]

Companies owned

Amazon owns over 40 smaller companies, including Twitch, Whole Foods Market, Zappos, Shopbop, Diapers.com, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Audible, Goodreads, Teachstreet and IMDb.^[9] Amazon.com makes money by letting other people sell things and taking a percentage of the price. Amazon also allows companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured products.

Other reading

• Brandt, Richard L. (2011). One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com. New York: Portfolio Penguin. ISBN 978-1-59184-375-7. Archived from the original on 2013-02-22. Retrieved 2018-08-31.
• Daisey, Mike (2002). 21 Dog Years. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2580-5.
• Friedman, Mara (2004). Amazon.com for Dummies. Wiley Publishing. ISBN 0-7645-5840-4.
• Marcus, James (2004). Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut. W. W. Norton. ISBN 1-56584-870-5.
• Spector, Robert (2000). Amazon.com – Get Big Fast: Inside the Revolutionary Business Model That Changed the World. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-662041-4.
• Stone, Brad (2013). The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. New York: Little Brown and Co. ISBN 978-0-316-21926-6. OCLC 856249407.