What is Amazon?

Amazon.com is the world's largest online retailer and a popular cloud services provider.

Originally starting out as an online bookstore, Amazon has evolved into an Internet-based company focused on providing e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence services.

Following Amazon's approach to selling to customers, the company allows customers to purchase anything, including clothing, beauty products, gourmet foods, jewelry, books, movies, electronics, pet supplies, furniture, toys, garden supplies, and household items.

Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, and has individual websites, software development centers, customer service centers, data centers, and fulfillment centers around the world.

Amazon history and timeline

Amazon has come a long way since it was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994 in the garage of his home in Bellevue, Washington.

Below is a brief history and timeline of the events that built Amazon from its humble beginnings into a multi-faceted business empire.

In the nineties

Amazon officially launched as an online bookseller on July 16, 1995. Bezos originally founded the company as Kadabra, but changed the name to Amazon. Bezos is said to have discovered the alphabetical value of words beginning with the letter A in the dictionary. Amazon chose the name because it is unique and different, and it is the company's plan to reflect the size of the Amazon River, the largest river in the world. Since its inception, the company's motto has always been “Get Big Fast.”

The first decade of the twenty-first century

In 2005, Amazon Prime, a membership-based service, offered Amazon customers free two-day shipping in the United States, in addition to streaming, shopping, and reading benefits. According to Amazon's website, the current cost of an Amazon Prime membership is $14.99 per month or $139 per year.

Amazon Web Services

This comprehensive and advanced cloud computing platform was also born in the 2000s. The first Amazon Web Services (AWS) offering was launched in 2006. It is used to provide online services for websites and applications on the client side. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage (S3) services are the cornerstones of the company's growing web services portfolio. In the same year, Amazon launched its cloud computing and video-on-demand service, then known as Unbox.

Amazon changed the way people read when it launched the first Kindle e-reader in 2007, changing the way people buy books. This tool helps users search, buy, and read e-books, magazines, and newspapers in the Kindle Store.

From 2010 to now

Amazon released its first tablet, the Kindle Fire, in 2011, and the Amazon Fire TV Stick, part of Amazon's broad media line, in 2014.

Amazon launched the Amazon Art fine art marketplace in 2013, which features original works by famous artists like Claude Monet and Norman Rockwell.

The popular virtual home assistant Amazon Alexa was introduced to consumers in 2015, followed by the Alexa-equipped Echo Dot in 2016.

Amazon acquired Whole Foods Organic in 2017 and launched the Amazon Go self-service store chain in 2018.

Popular Amazon products and services

Amazon offers an ever-increasing range of services and products. Below is a list of popular offers.

selling by pieces

Amazon marketplace.

 Amazon's e-commerce platform allows third-party retailers to display and sell their own products alongside Amazon's.

Amazon update.

Amazon's grocery and delivery service is currently available in nearly two dozen U.S. cities and a few international locations. Rentals can be ordered through the Amazon Fresh website or through the Amazon mobile app. Customers can have their groceries delivered or go to the store to pick them up.

Amazon van.

 Launched in 2007, Amazon Win helps manufacturers and publishers find reviews for their products so customers can make informed purchases.

the mouth

Voot, which Amazon acquired in 2010, offers limited-time deals and special offers that rotate daily. These stores offer refurbished and new items. Prime members get free shipping.

Zabos

Amazon bought Zappos in 2009. The online shoe and clothing store carries a number of brands including Nike, Sperry, Adidas and Uggs.

Goods from Amazon.

T-shirt printing services allow sellers to upload their t-shirt designs for free and earn royalties on every sale. Amazon does the rest: from printing the T-shirts to delivering them to customers.

Made by Amazon.

This platform allows artisans to sell handcrafted products to customers all over the world.

Consumer technology

Amazon Kindle.

Amazon's first e-reader, the Kindle, allows users to search for, purchase, and read e-books, magazines, and newspapers from the Kindle Store.

Amazon Fire Tablet.

Amazon's popular, high-end Fire tablet, formerly known as the Kindle Fire, competes with Apple's iPad.

d Amazon Fire TV.

Amazon's line of media players and digital devices deliver online video content to an integrated high-definition TV.

Amazon Alexa.

This cloud-based, AI-powered, voice-activated personal assistant is designed to answer questions, interact with users, and perform tasks and other commands.

Amazon Echo.

This is one of Amazon's smart home devices that is equipped with a speaker and connects to Alexa. The Amazon Echo can perform many tasks, including talking about the weather, creating a shopping list, and controlling other smart products like lights, switches, and TVs.

amazon-echopunt.

The Echo Dot, the smaller, disc-shaped version of the original Amazon Echo device, can be placed in any room and answer questions, play music, and read news and other stories.

Amazon Echo Show.

The Amazon Echo Show, part of the Amazon Echo line of speakers, works similarly through Alexa, but has a 7-inch touchscreen for playing videos and music and making video calls with other Echo users.

Amazon Astro.

This is Amazon's first home monitoring robot that works with Alexa. It is designed to perform a variety of household tasks, such as monitoring the home, taking care of the elderly through alarms and notifications, following its owners from room to room, and watching TV shows, music or podcasts.

Subscription services

Amazon Prime

This subscription service provides members with exclusive shopping and entertainment services, discounts and more. For example, all Amazon Prime members enjoy one- or two-day shipping on eligible orders.

Amazon Prime Video.

Amazon Video is an on-demand streaming service that offers a selection of about 24,000 movies and more than 2,100 TV shows. This service is included in Amazon Prime membership.

Amazon Drive.

Amazon Drive, formerly known as Amazon Cloud Drive, is a cloud storage app that provides Amazon customers with 5 gigabytes (GB) of free, secure online storage for photos, videos, and files. Amazon Prime members get free, unlimited full-resolution photo storage and 5GB of video storage.

Twitch Prime.

Twitch Prime, a monthly subscription service, is a subsidiary of Amazon Prime. It gives members premium access to Twitch – a video streaming platform that provides a fun and social way to watch people play games.

Amazon Music Prime.

It's a free Amazon music streaming service for Prime members.

Digital content

Pay on Amazon

Amazon Pay, an online transaction processing platform, allows Amazon account holders to use their Amazon accounts to make payments to third-party online sellers.

Amazon Music Unlimited.

 Amazon's premium music service costs $8.99 per month for Prime members and $9.99 per month for non-members.

Sugar shop.

The Kindle Store is part of Amazon's shopping site and can be accessed from any Kindle device to purchase eBooks.

Amazon App Store for Android.

The Amazon App Store for Android allows users to download games and mobile apps on supported devices.

Os

S3.

It's Amazon's cloud-based, scalable object storage. Files in S3 are called objects and are stored in containers called buckets.

Amazon Simple Queuing Service (SQS).

SQS is a paid web service designed to provide access to a message queue where messages are held until the computer can process them.

Amazon EC2.

The web service interface provides scalable computing capabilities in the AWS cloud. Users can run virtual servers or instances known as EC2 instances which can scale up or down depending on network requirements.

Amazon S3 Glacier.

Amazon S3 Glacier is a low-cost cloud storage service for data that can come with long storage periods. It also provides data storage and cold data backup.

AWS Identity and Access Control (IAM).

IAM provides secure and controlled access to resources.

Amazon redshift.

This cloud data warehouse allows users to query petabytes of structured and semi-structured data using standard structured language queries. For example, to handle increased trading volume, Nasdaq moved from its on-premises data center to the AWS cloud, powered by Amazon's Redshift suite.

Amazon AI Services

Amazon Sage Maker.

Amazon SageMaker is a complete machine learning cloud management platform that enables developers and data scientists to build, train, and deploy machine learning models for predictive analytics applications.

Amazon reads.

The service is powered by the same technology as Alexa to create conversational interactions with any app using voice and text.

Amazon Polly.

Amazon's text-to-speech service uses deep learning technology to convert text to speech. Contains 60 sounds in 29 languages.

Amazon login.

The facial recognition and analytics platform SaaS uses deep learning algorithms to process images and extract information from them.

OS Deep Lens

The programmable video camera allows developers to easily experiment with machine learning, artificial intelligence, and IoT.

Alexa voice service.

This programming interface provides a C++ library that allows developers to add Amazon Alexa voice and other capabilities to their applications and devices.

Amazon Shipping.

The service converts speech quickly and accurately using a deep learning process called automatic speech recognition.

Meaning of Amazon.

Amazon Translate is a cloud service that converts large text written in one language into another.

Alexa skill set.

This software development tool allows developers to build skills or conversational applications within Amazon Alexa.

Amazon private label brands

AmazonBasis.

 It is Amazon's own label, a low-budget brand that primarily sells kitchen, technology, and home products.

Amazon Ingredients.

 This includes household products such as health and personal care supplies as well as nutritional supplements.

Bear midwife

Amazon's private label sells baby wipes, diapers for newborns to ages 6, baby food, diaper pail packages, and baby laundry detergent.

Very fast!

The brand started as a laundry detergent in 2016, but has added household paper and toilet paper to the product line.

Amazon Essential.

This clothing line, the first of its kind, offers basic apparel for men, women, infants and children, with additional options for families, adults and sports performance.

Said Billy

This private label Amazon launched in 2016 and sells breakfast products. In the year in February 2019, the brand started offering milk delivery services.

Good threads.

 This men's clothing line is only available to Amazon Prime members. The brand offers casual and professional classes and is considered a bit more luxurious and more stylish than Amazon's Essentials brand.

Popular Amazon branches and purchases

From healthcare to entertainment, Amazon has acquired many companies over time, touching on different sectors.

Here is a list of Amazon's most popular acquisitions and affiliates:

IMDb

Amazon acquired the world's most popular database of movies, television, celebrities, video games, and online content in 1998.

audible.

Audible, a provider of books and audio content, was purchased by Amazon in 2008 for $300 million.

Zabos

 Amazon acquired the online shoe and clothing retailer in 2009 for a total deal of $1.2 billion.

cough

Twitch, a social media streaming and video game platform, was purchased by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million.

All foods.

Amazon acquired the food, beverage and organic supermarket chain Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion.

communicate

Amazon bought the home security and smart home company in 2018 for $1 billion.

Zoox.

The self-driving vehicle, robotics and transportation company will be wholly owned by Amazon and will be acquired in 2020 for $1.2 billion.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

 Amazon acquired the film and television studio in March 2022 for $8.5 billion.

Amazon controversy and criticism

Amazon has seen major setbacks on many fronts over the years. The tech giant is responsible for the Amazon Effect: the evolution and disruption of the retail market due to the exclusive nature of the company.

Here are some of the concerns and allegations Amazon has faced over time.

Monopoly and anti-competitive behaviour.

Because of Amazon's size and economies of scale, it has been accused of raising prices for local and small retailers and privatizing the open market. This is causing the slow death of the traditional retail model pioneered by companies like Sears and JCPenney.

Inappropriate treatment of employees.

Amazon has been accused of providing unfair working conditions in its warehouses, including treating workers like robots, paying low wages and creating unsafe working conditions.

Large environmental footprint.

Over the past two decades, environmentalists have accused the Amazon of having a staggering carbon footprint. Transporting goods of any kind depends on fuel, and since Amazon delivers everything everywhere, it leaves a carbon footprint in the long run, which automatically falls on the shoulders.

You're wasting it

 A recent investigation by British television network ITV revealed how Amazon is contributing to the global e-waste crisis by throwing away millions of unused or returned products. It includes millions of electronic devices such as phones, computers and televisions that are toxic to soil, water, air and wildlife.

List of counterfeit products.

Amazon is under scrutiny from brands, retailers, and regulators, such as counterfeiter lists and third-party marketplaces that sell counterfeit products on Amazon. Amazon has blocked 10 billion counterfeit listings by 2021 by destroying 2 million counterfeit products shipped to its warehouses to prevent counterfeits from appearing on its website.

Tax fraud.

Amazon is rapidly growing into a monopoly and has managed to avoid paying taxes despite its huge profits. According to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the company avoided $5.2 billion in federal income taxes by 2021.

Amazon Finance

According to a press release on Amazon's investor relations website, Amazon recorded a sharp increase in net sales in the first quarter of 2022, but with a decline in operating income.

Here are some notable stats from the release.

Net sales increased 7% to $116.4 billion in the first quarter, compared to $108.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Excluding the unfavorable currency impact of $1.8 billion year-over-year in the quarter ended, net sales increased 9%. First quarter of 2021.

Operating income fell to $3.7 billion in the first quarter, compared to $8.9 billion in the first quarter of 2021.

The net loss was $3.8 billion in the first quarter compared to net income of $8.1 billion in the first quarter of 2021.