Amazon (company)

Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon
FormerlyCadabra, Inc. (1994–1995)
Company typePublic
ISINUS0231351067
Industry
FoundedJuly 5, 1994 (1994-07-05), in Bellevue, Washington, U.S.
FounderJeff Bezos
Headquarters,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Products
Services
RevenueIncrease US$574.8 billion (2023)
Increase US$36.85 billion (2023)
Increase US$30.43 billion (2023)
Total assetsIncrease US$527.9 billion (2023)
Total equityIncrease US$201.9 billion (2023)
OwnerJeff Bezos (9.8%)
Number of employees
 1,525,000 (Dec. 2023)
Subsidiaries
Websiteamazon.com
Footnotes / references
[1][2][3][4]

Amazon.com, Inc.,[1] doing business as Amazon (/ˈæməzɒn/, AM-ə-zon; UK also /ˈæməzən/, AM-ə-zən), is an American multinational technology company, engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.[5] It is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies; the other four are Alphabet (parent company of Google), Apple, Meta (parent company of Facebook), and Microsoft.

Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington.[6] The company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories. This diversification led to it being referred to as "The Everything Store".[7]

The company has multiple subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services, providing cloud computing, Zoox, a self-driving car division, Kuiper Systems, a satellite Internet provider, and Amazon Lab126, a computer hardware R&D provider. 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 market share and presence as a physical retailer.[8]

Amazon has a reputation as a disruptor of industries through technological innovation and aggressive reinvestment of profits into capital expenditures.[9][10][11][12] As of 2023, it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service through AWS,[13] live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share.[14] 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 close to 200 million subscribers worldwide.[15][16] It is the second-largest private employer in the United States.[17]

As of October 2023, Amazon is the 12th-most visited website in the world and 82% of its traffic comes from the United States.[18][19]

Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, MGM+, Amazon Music, Twitch, Audible and Wondery[20] units. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, film and television content through Amazon MGM Studios, including the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio which acquired in March 2022. It also produces consumer electronics—most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs.

Amazon has been criticized for customer data collection practices,[21] a toxic work culture,[22] censorship,[23][24][25][26][27] tax avoidance,[28][29] and anti-competitive behavior.[30][31]

  1. ^ a b "Amazon.com, Inc. 2023 Form 10-K Annual Report". US Securities and Exchange Commission. February 2, 2024.
  2. ^ "California Secretary of State Business Search". Secretary of State of California. Archived from the original on February 23, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
  3. ^ "Amazon.com, Inc. 2022 Proxy Statement". US Securities and Exchange Commission. April 14, 2022.
  4. ^ Reuter, Dominick (July 30, 2021). "1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee". Business Insider. Retrieved February 4, 2022.
  5. ^ "Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos". PBS.
  6. ^ Guevara, Natalie (November 17, 2020). "Amazon's John Schoettler has helped change how we think of corporate campuses". Puget Sound Business Journal. Archived from the original on April 17, 2021. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
  7. ^ Kakutani, Michiko (October 28, 2013). "Selling as Hard as He Can". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
  8. ^ "Amazon and Whole Foods Market Announce Acquisition to Close This Monday, Will Work Together to Make High-Quality, Natural and Organic Food Affordable for Everyone" (Press release). Business Wire. August 24, 2017.
  9. ^ Furth, John F. (May 18, 2018). "Why Amazon and Jeff Bezos Are So Successful at Disruption". Entrepreneur. Retrieved May 16, 2019.
  10. ^ Bylund, Per (August 29, 2017). "Amazon's Lesson About Disruption: Rattle Any Market You Can". Entrepreneur. Retrieved May 16, 2019.
  11. ^ "How to compete with Amazon". Fortune. Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  12. ^ "Reinvesting for Growth – Why Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is Undervalued Even in this Market". Yahoo Finance. Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  13. ^ "Microsoft Cloud Revenues Leap; Amazon is Still Way Out in Front". Reno, Nevada: Synergy Research Group. October 29, 2014.
  14. ^ Jopson, Barney (July 12, 2011). "Amazon urges California referendum on online tax". Financial Times. Archived from the original on July 14, 2011. Retrieved August 4, 2011.
  15. ^ "Amazon Prime now has 200 million members, jumping 50 million in one year". Yahoo News. April 15, 2021. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
  16. ^ Spangler, Todd (April 15, 2021). "Amazon Prime Tops 200 Million Members, Jeff Bezos Says". Variety. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  17. ^ Cheng, Evelyn (September 23, 2016). "Amazon climbs into list of top five largest US stocks by market cap". CNBC. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  18. ^ "Top Websites Ranking". Similarweb. Archived from the original on February 10, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
  19. ^ "amazon.com". similarweb.com.
  20. ^ Carman, Ashley (December 30, 2020). "Amazon buys Wondery, setting itself up to compete against Spotify for podcast domination". The Verge. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
  21. ^ Harwell, Drew (April 30, 2019). "Amazon's facial-recognition AI is supercharging police in Oregon". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 30, 2019.
  22. ^ Kantor, Jodi; Streitfeld, David (August 15, 2015). "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace". The New York Times. Retrieved February 15, 2020.
  23. ^ Kevin Conner. "Stop Amazon.com Censorship". MoveOn. Retrieved November 26, 2023.
  24. ^ Marco Rubio (February 24, 2021). "Rubio, Colleagues to Amazon: Censorship of Conservative Books an Assault on Free Speech". United States Senate. Retrieved November 26, 2023.
  25. ^ "Heritage Responds to Amazon Censoring Expert's Book on Black Lives Matter". The Heritage Foundation. September 16, 2021. Retrieved November 26, 2023.
  26. ^ Ron Charles (April 21, 2021). "Outcry over book censorship reveals how online retailers choose books or don't". Washington Post. Retrieved November 26, 2023.
  27. ^ Siladitya Ray (March 12, 2021). "Amazon Responds To Republican Sens. On Book Ban, Says Won't Sell Books That Frame LGBTQ+ Identities As Mental Illness". Forbes. Retrieved November 26, 2023.
  28. ^ Stampler, Laura (February 14, 2019). "Amazon Will Pay a Whopping $0 in Federal Taxes on $11.2 Billion Profits". Fortune. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  29. ^ Huddleston, Tom Jr. (February 15, 2019). "Amazon will pay $0 in federal taxes this year — and it's partially thanks to Trump". CNBC. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  30. ^ Khan, Lina (January 2017). "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox". Yale Law Journal. 126 (3): 564–907.
  31. ^ Cite error: The named reference baum was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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