American multinational technology company
Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon's headquarters, the
Doppler building
Amazon Formerly Cadabra, Inc. (1994–1995) Company type Public ISIN US0231351067 Industry Founded July 5, 1994; 30 years ago (1994-07-05 ) , in Bellevue, Washington , U.S. Founder Jeff Bezos Headquarters , U.S.
Area served
Worldwide Key people
Products Services Revenue US$574.8 billion (2023) US$36.85 billion (2023) US$30.43 billion (2023)Total assets US$527.9 billion (2023)Total equity US$201.9 billion (2023)Owner Jeff Bezos (8.92%) Number of employees
≈ 1,525,000 (2023) Subsidiaries Website amazon.com Footnotes / references [ 1] [ 2] [ 3] [ 4]
Amazon.com, Inc. ,[ 1] doing business as Amazon (, AM -ə-zon ; , AM -ə-zən ), is an American multinational technology company , engaged in e-commerce , cloud computing , online advertising , digital streaming , and artificial intelligence .[ 5] It is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies; the other four being Alphabet (parent company of Google ), Apple , Meta (parent company of Facebook ), and Microsoft .
Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington .[ 6] The company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories. This diversification led to it being referred to as "The Everything Store".[ 7]
The company has multiple subsidiaries , including Amazon Web Services , providing cloud computing, Zoox , a self-driving car division, Kuiper Systems , a satellite Internet provider, and Amazon Lab126 , a computer hardware R&D provider. Other subsidiaries include Ring , Twitch , IMDb , and Whole Foods Market . Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$ 13.4 billion substantially increased its market share and presence as a physical retailer .[ 8] Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video , MGM+ , Amazon Music , Twitch , Audible and Wondery [ 9] 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 was acquired in March 2022, and owns Brilliance Audio and Audible, which produce and distribute audiobooks, respectively. Amazon also produces consumer electronics —most notably, Kindle e-readers , Echo devices, Fire tablets , and Fire TVs .
Amazon has a reputation as a disruptor of industries through technological innovation and aggressive reinvestment of profits into capital expenditures.[ 10] [ 11] [ 12] [ 13] As of 2023[update] , it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace , smart speaker provider, cloud computing service through AWS,[ 14] live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share .[ 15] 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.[ 16] [ 17] It is the second-largest private employer in the United States [ 18] and the second-largest company in the World and in the US by revenue as of 2024.[ 19] As of October 2023, Amazon is the 12th-most visited website in the world and 82% of its traffic comes from the United States.[ 20] [ 21] Amazon is also the global leader in research and development spending, with R&D expenditure of US$73 billion in 2022.[ 22]
Amazon has been criticized on various grounds, including but not limited to customer data collection practices, a toxic work culture , censorship , tax avoidance , and anti-competitive practices .
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^ Reuter, Dominick (July 30, 2021). "1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee" . Business Insider . Archived from the original on February 3, 2022. Retrieved February 4, 2022 .
^ "Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos" . PBS . Archived from the original on January 16, 2020. Retrieved February 15, 2020 .
^ 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 .
^ 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 .
^ "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. Archived from the original on September 13, 2021. Retrieved September 13, 2021 .
^ Carman, Ashley (December 30, 2020). "Amazon buys Wondery, setting itself up to compete against Spotify for podcast domination" . The Verge . Archived from the original on September 29, 2023. Retrieved March 16, 2024 .
^ Furth, John F. (May 18, 2018). "Why Amazon and Jeff Bezos Are So Successful at Disruption" . Entrepreneur . Archived from the original on August 26, 2022. Retrieved May 16, 2019 .
^ Bylund, Per (August 29, 2017). "Amazon's Lesson About Disruption: Rattle Any Market You Can" . Entrepreneur . Archived from the original on March 28, 2022. Retrieved May 16, 2019 .
^ "How to compete with Amazon" . Fortune . Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved September 27, 2022 .
^ "Reinvesting for Growth – Why Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is Undervalued Even in this Market" . Yahoo Finance . Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved September 27, 2022 .
^ "Microsoft Cloud Revenues Leap; Amazon is Still Way Out in Front" . Reno, Nevada : Synergy Research Group. October 29, 2014. Archived from the original on May 4, 2019. Retrieved July 2, 2015 .
^ 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 .
^ "Amazon Prime now has 200 million members, jumping 50 million in one year" . Yahoo News . April 15, 2021. Archived from the original on January 22, 2022. Retrieved December 20, 2021 .
^ Spangler, Todd (April 15, 2021). "Amazon Prime Tops 200 Million Members, Jeff Bezos Says" . Variety . Archived from the original on April 15, 2021. Retrieved February 14, 2022 .
^ Cheng, Evelyn (September 23, 2016). "Amazon climbs into list of top five largest US stocks by market cap" . CNBC . Archived from the original on May 10, 2019. Retrieved February 20, 2019 .
^ "Fortune Global 500" . Fortune . Retrieved August 19, 2024 .
^ "Top Websites Ranking" . Similarweb . Archived from the original on February 10, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2021 .
^ "amazon.com" . similarweb.com . Archived from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2024 .
^ Intelligence, fDi. "Top 100 global innovation leaders" . www.fdiintelligence.com . Retrieved June 16, 2024 .