Amazon (company)
 Logo since 2000 | |
 The Amazon Spheres, part of the Amazon headquarters campus in Seattle | |
| Amazon | |
| Formerly | Cadabra, Inc. (1994–95) |
| Type | Public |
| |
| ISIN | US0231351067 |
| Industry | |
| Founded | July 5, 1994 Bellevue, Washington, U.S. |
| Founder | Jeff Bezos |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
| Products | |
| Services | |
| Revenue |  US$386.064 billion (2020) |
| US$22.9 billion (2020) | |
| 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 |
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| Website | amazon |
| Footnotes / references | |
Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington, which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is one of the Big Five companies in the U.S. information technology industry, along with Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. The company has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", as well as the world's most valuable brand.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. It started as an online marketplace for books but expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for US$13.4 billion, which substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer. In 2018, its two-day delivery service, Amazon Prime, surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.
Amazon is known for its disruption of well-established industries through technological innovation and mass scale. It is the world's largest online marketplace, AI assistant provider, live-streaming platform and cloud computing platform as measured by revenue and market capitalization. Amazon is the largest Internet company by revenue in the world. It is the second largest private employer in the United States and one of the world's most valuable companies. As of 2020, Amazon has the highest global brand valuation.
Amazon distributes downloads and streaming of video, music, and audiobooks through its Prime Video, Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible subsidiaries. Amazon also has a publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, a film and television studio, Amazon Studios, and a cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services. It produces consumer electronics including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo devices. Its acquisitions over the years include Ring, Twitch, Whole Foods Market, and IMDb.
Amazon has been criticized for practices including technological surveillance overreach,[27] a hyper-competitive and demanding work culture, tax avoidance, and anti-competitive behavior.
History
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in July 1994. He chose Seattle because of technical talent as Microsoft is located there. In May 1997, Amazon went public. It began selling music and videos in 1998, at which time it began operations internationally by acquiring online sellers of books in United Kingdom and Germany. The following year, Amazon began selling items including video games, consumer electronics, home improvement items, software, games, and toys.
In 2002, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provided data on website popularity, Internet traffic patterns and other statistics for marketers and developers. In 2006, Amazon grew its AWS portfolio when Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which rents computer processing power as well as Simple Storage Service (S3), that rents data storage via the Internet, were made available. That same year, Amazon started Fulfillment by Amazon which managed the inventory of individuals and small companies selling their belongings through the company internet site. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems to automate its inventory-management business, purchasing Whole Foods Market supermarket chain five years later in 2017.
In January 2021, Amazon invested with over $278 million by opening two new centers in Italy (Novara and Modena) and creating over 1100 jobs.
On February 2, 2021, Amazon announced that Jeff Bezos would be stepping down as CEO and transition to Executive Chair of Amazon's board in Q3 of 2021. Andy Jassy, who is currently CEO of AWS, will succeed Bezos as CEO of the company.
Board of directors
As of September 2020, the board of directors is:
- Jeff Bezos, President, CEO, and Chairman
- Keith B. Alexander, CEO IronNet Cybersecurity, former NSA Director
- Rosalind Brewer, Group President, and COO, Starbucks
- Jamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale, and Dorr
- Daniel P. Huttenlocher, Dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Judy McGrath, former CEO, MTV Networks
- Indra Nooyi, former CEO, PepsiCo
- Jon Rubinstein, former Chairman, and CEO, Palm, Inc.
- Thomas O. Ryder, former Chairman, and CEO, Reader's Digest Association
- Patty Stonesifer, President, and CEO, Martha's Table
- Wendell P. Weeks, Chairman, President, and CEO, Corning Inc.
Merchant partnerships
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 own independent e-commerce website. The company was later awarded $51 million in damages.
In 2001, Amazon entered into a similar agreement with Borders Group, under which Amazon would comanage Borders.com as a co-branded service. Borders pulled out of the arrangement in 2007, with plans to also launch its own online store.
On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves.
In November 2013, Amazon announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to begin delivering orders on Sundays. The service, included in Amazon's standard shipping rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York because of the high-volume and inability to deliver in a timely way, with plans to expand into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix by 2014.
In June 2017, Nike confirmed a "pilot" partnership with Amazon to sell goods directly on the platform. This pilot ended in November 2019.
As of October 11, 2017, AmazonFresh sold a range of Booths branded products for home delivery in selected areas.
In September 2017, Amazon ventured with one of its sellers JV Appario Retail owned by Patni Group which has recorded a total income of US$ 104.44 million (₹ 759 crore) in financial year 2017–18.
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.
Logistics
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 United States 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 hour Prime Now, same or next day Amazon Fresh groceries, and sandard 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 United States Postal Service (mostly in rural areas), and 14% by UPS.
Products and services
Amazon.com's product lines available at its website include several media (books, DVDs, music CDs, videotapes and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal-care items, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items and toys & games. 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. Amazon has separate retail websites for some countries and also offers international shipping of some of its products to certain other countries. In November 2020, the company started an online delivery service dedicated to prescription drugs. The service provides discounts up to 80% for generic drugs and up to 40% for branded drugs for Prime subscribe users. The products can be purchased on the company's website or at over 50,000 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies in the United State
