Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics—notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet computer—and is a major provider of cloud computing services.

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company (as Cadabra) in July 1994, and the site went online as Amazon.com in 1995.[8] The company was renamed after the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world,[8] which in turn was named after the Amazons, the legendary nation of female warriors in Greek mythology.

Amazon has separate retail websites for the following countries United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and China, with international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products.[5] It is also expected to launch its websites in Poland,[9] Netherlands, and Sweden.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his regret minimization framework, which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the Internet business boom during that time. Amazonwas originally founded in Bezos' garage in Bellevue, Washington.

The company began as an online bookstoreIn the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states and over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to $20,000week. While the largest brick and mortar bookstores and mail order catalogs might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could carry several times more, since they had an almost unlimited virtual (not actual) warehouse those of the actual product makerssuppliers. Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with A so that it would appear early in alphabetic order. He began looking through the dictionary and settled on Amazon because it was a place that was exotic and different and it was one of the biggest rivers in the world, as he hoped his company would beSince 2000, Amazon's logotype has been an arrow leading from A to Z, representing that they carry every product from A to Z.

Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.In October 1995, the company announced itself to the public.[18] In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price of US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual; it did not expect to make a profit for four to five years. This slow growth caused stockholders to complain about the company not reaching profitability fast enough to justify investing in, or to even survive in the long-term. When the dot-com bubble burst at the start of the 21st Century, destroying many e-companies in the process, Amazon survived, and grew on past the bubble burst to become a huge player in online sales. It finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001 $5 million (i.e., 1¢ per share), on revenues of more than $1 billion. This profit margin, though extremely modest, proved to skeptics that Bezos' unconventional business model could succeed.[19] In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be the world's largest bookstore was false. Barnes and Noble asserted, [It] isn't a bookstore at all. It's a book broker. The suit was later settled out of court, and Amazon continued to make the same claim. Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen their trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was also settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and the re-assignment of the former Walmart executives.

Acquisitions
1998 PlanetAll, a reminder service based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junglee, an XML-based data mining startup based in Sunnyvale; Bookpages.co.uk, a UK online book retailer, which became Amazon UK on October 15, 1998.

1999 Internet Movie Database (IMDb); Alexa Internet, Accept.com, and Exchange.com

2003 Online music retailer CDNow. By 2011, the web site cdnow.com was defunct and in use by a different company.

2004 Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce website.

2005 BookSurge, a print on demand company, and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company. CreateSpace.com (formerly CustomFlix), a distributor of on-demand DVDs, based in Scotts Valley, California. CreateSpace has since expanded to include on-demand books, CDs, and video.

2006 Shopbop, a retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women, based in Madison, Wisconsin.

2007 dpreview.com, a digital photography review website based in London; Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States.
2008 Audible.com; Fabric.com; Box Office Mojo; AbeBooks; Shelfari; (including a 40% stake in LibraryThing and whole ownership of BookFinder.com, Gojaba.com, and FillZ); Reflexive Entertainment, a casual video game development company.

Merchant partnerships
Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would bring up Amazon.com's Toys & Games tab; however, this relationship was terminated due to a lawsuit.[61] Amazon also hosted and managed the website for Borders bookstores but this ceased in 2008.From 2001 until August 2011, Amazon hosted the retail website for Target. Benefit Cosmetics, another merchant partner of Amazon, has also launched a major E-Commerce platform of their own based on Hybris and arvato systems NA, in the US, EU and China. Amazon.com operates retail websites for Sears Canada, bebe Stores, Timex, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, and Lacoste. For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer, Benefit Cosmetics' UK entity, edeals.com, and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform where a customer can interact with some people they call the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, or phone-based customer service agents. Amazon Web Services also powers AOL's Shop@AOL.

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. These titles will be available for purchase exclusively through Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet.

Fulfillment and warehousing
Fulfillment centers are located in the following cities, often near airports. These centers also provide warehousing and order-fulfillment for third-party sellers
Warehouses are large, each has hundreds of employees. Employees are responsible for four basic tasks unpacking and inspecting incoming goods; placing goods in storage and recording their location; picking goods from their computer recorded locations to make up an individual shipment; and shipping. A central computer which records the location of goods and maps out routes for pickers plays a central role; employees carry hand-held computers which communicate with the central computer and monitor their rate of progress. A picker with their cart may walk 10 or more miles a day. Warehouse work for Amazon is relatively low-paying and somewhat regimented; in the United Kingdom initial staffing was provided by Randstad Holding and other temporary employment agencies. Some workers are accepted as Amazon employees and granted pension and shares of stock; others are dismissed. When we have permanent positions available, we look to the top performing temporary associates to fill them. Development of a high level of automation is anticipated in the future following Amazon's 2012 acquisition of Kiva Systems, a warehouse automation company.

These U.S. distribution centers have been closed SDC Seattle Distribution Center, located in Georgetown, just south of downtown Seattle; Red Rock, Nevada; Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; Munster, Indiana; and McDonough, Georgia. From 2000[90] until February 2001, there was an Amazon customer service based in The Hague, Netherlands.

Amazon product lines include books, music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, and groceries.

The company launched amazon.com Auctions, a web auctions service, in March 1999. However, it failed to chip away at the large market share of the industry pioneer, eBay. Later, the company launched a fixed-price marketplace business, zShops, in September 1999, and the now defunct partnership with Sotheby's, called Sothebys.amazon.com, in November. Auctions and zShops evolved into Amazon Marketplace, a service launched in November 2000 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. Today, Amazon Marketplace's main rival is eBay's Half.com service.

In August 2007, Amazon announced AmazonFresh, a grocery service offering perishable and nonperishable foods. Customers can have orders delivered to their homes at dawn or during a specified daytime window. Delivery was initially restricted to residents of Mercer Island, Washington, and was later expanded to several ZIP codes in Seattle proper. AmazonFresh also operated pick-up locations in the suburbs of Bellevue and Kirkland from summer 2007 through early 2008.

In 2012, Amazon announced Vine.com for buying green products, including groceries, household items and apparel. It is part of Quidsi, the company that Amazon bought in 2010 that also runs the sites Diapers.com (baby), Wag.com (pets) and YoYo.com (toys).[94] Amazon also owns other e-commerce sites like Zappos.com, Shopbop.com and Woot.
Amazon's Subscribe & Save program offers a discounted price on an item (usually sold in bulk), free shipping on every Subscribe & Save shipment, and automatic shipment of the item every one, two, three, or six months.

Consumer electronics
In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content over Whispernet, via the Sprint Nextel EV-DO wireless network. The screen uses E Ink technology to reduce battery consumption and to provide a more legible display. As of March 2011, the stated library numbers over 850,000 titles.

In September 2011, Amazon announced its entry into the tablet computer market by introducing the Kindle Fire, which runs a customized version of the operating system Android. The exceedingly low pricing of Fire ($199 USD) was widely perceived as a strategy backed by Amazon's revenue from its content sales, to be stimulated by sales of Fire.

Digital content
In July 2010, Amazon announced that e-book sales for its Kindle reader outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010. Amazon claims that, during that period, 143 e-books were sold for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no digital edition; and during late June and early July, sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcovers.

Amazon MP3, its own online music store, launched in the U.S. on September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management. (In addition to copyright law, Amazon's terms of use agreements restrict use of the MP3s, but Amazon does not use DRM to enforce those terms.)[98] Amazon MP3 sells music from the Big 4 record labels EMI, Universal, Warner Bros. Records, and Sony Music, as well as independents. Prior to the launch of this service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a music store with a variable pricing model based on demand. Amazon MP3 was the first online offering of DRM-free music from all four major record companies.

In January 2008, Amazon began rolling out its MP3 service to subsidiary websites worldwide. In December 2008, Amazon MP3 was made available in the UK.

Amazon's Honor System was launched in 2001 to allow customers to make donations or buy digital content, with Amazon collecting a percentage of the payment plus a fee. The service was discontinued in 2008[105] and replaced by Amazon Payments.

In 2011, Amazon announced that it was releasing a Mac download store to offer dozens of games and hundreds of pieces of software for Apple computers.

On August 2012, Amazon announced it would be adding a gaming department to its company titled Amazon Game Studios. Amazon states that they will be bringing, innovative, fun and well-crafted games.

In January 2013, Amazon announced it is launching AutoRip, a digital music service.

Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime is a service of free two-day shipping on all eligible purchases, for a flat annual fee, as well as discounted one-day shipping rates.[109] Amazon launched the program in the contiguous United States in 2005, in Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany in 2007, in France (as Amazon Premium) in 2008, in Italy in 2011 and in Canada in 2013.
Amazon Prime membership also provides Amazon Instant Video, the instant streaming of selected movies and TV shows at no additional cost, as of February 2011.[110] In November 2011, it was announced that Prime members have access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which allows users to borrow certain popular titles for free reading on Kindle hardware, up to one book a month, with no due date.

Private labels and exclusive marketing arrangements
In August 2005Amazon began selling products under its own private label, Pinzon; the trademark applications indicated that the label would be used for textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods.[ In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a more diverse list of goods and to register a new design consisting of the word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter O which appears at the one o'clock position. Coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelryIn September 2008, Amazon filed to have the name registered. USPTO has finished its review of the application, but Amazon has yet to receive an official registration for the name.

AmazonBasics is a private-label consumer electronics product line. It sells AV cables, blank DVD media and other electronics products under the AmazonBasics product label. The line was launched in 2009.

An Amazon.com exclusive is a product, usually a DVD, that is available exclusively on Amazon.com. Some DVDs are produced by the owner of the filmproduct, while others are produced by Amazon.com itself. The DVDs produced by Amazon are made using their CreateSpace program, in which DVDs are created, upon ordering, using DVD-R technology. The DVDs are then shipped about two days later. Some DVDs (such as the Jersey Shore Season 1 or The Unusuals Season 1) first release their DVD on Amazon as an Amazon.com Exclusive for a limited time before being released elsewhere. On May 23, 2011, Amazon.com allowed customers to download Lady Gaga's Born This Way album for $0.99, resulting in some downloads being delayed, due to an extremely high volume of downloads.

Computing services
Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, which provides programmatic access to latent features on its website. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was first launched as a public beta of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server. This was later expanded to several operating systems, including various flavors of Linux and OpenSolaris.

In November 2005, amazon.com began testing Amazon Mechanical Turk, an application programming interface (API) allowing programs to dispatch tasks to human processors.
In March 2006, Amazon launched an online storage service called Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). An unlimited number of data objects, from 1 byte to 5 terabytes in size, can be stored in S3 and distributed via HTTP or BitTorrent. The service charges monthly fees for data stored and transferred. In 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), a distributed queue messaging service, and product wikis (later folded into Amapedia) and discussion forums for certain products using guidelines that follow standard message board conventions. Also in 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a virtual site farm, allowing users to use the Amazon infrastructure to run applications ranging from running simulations to web hosting. In 2008, Amazon improved the service by adding Elastic Block Store (EBS), offering persistent storage for Amazon EC2 instances and Elastic IP addresses, and offering static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing. Amazon introduced SimpleDB, a database system, allowing users of its other infrastructure to utilize a high-reliability, high-performance database system.

Amazon continues to refine and add services to AWS, adding such services as Scalable DNS service (Amazon Route 53), payment handling, and AWS specific APIs for their Mechanical Turk service.

In August 2012, Amazon announced Amazon Glacier, a low-cost online file storage web service that provides reliable data archiving, storage, and backup.
In November 2012 at AWS' web developer converence in Las Vegas it announced it was targeting large companies as cloud storage clients. It will further cut its S3 prices to customers with long-term contracts in its Redshift storage service launching in 2013.

In March 2013 Amazon announced its Mobile Ads API for developers. The new Ads API can be used on apps distributed on any Android platform as long as the app is also available on Amazon’s Appstore.

Content production
Amazon Publishing is Amazon's publishing unit. It is composed of AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47 North, and Powered by Amazon. Additional imprints are planned.

Launched in 2005, Amazon Shorts offered exclusive short stories and non-fiction pieces from best-selling authors for immediate download. By June 2007, the program had over 1,700 pieces and was adding about 50 new pieces per week. The program was discontinued on June 1, 2010.

In 2008, Amazon expanded into film production, producing the film The Stolen Child with 20th Century Fox.

Donations
Amazon also created channels to benefit certain causes. In 2004, Amazon allowed customers to donate $5 to $200 to the campaigns of 2004 U.S. presidential hopefuls, providing links that raised $300,000 for the candidates. Amazon has periodically reactivated a Red Cross donation channel after crises such as the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. By January 2005, nearly 200,000 people had donated over $15.7 million in the U.S.

AmazonLocal
AmazonLocal is a daily deal service launched in June 2011 in Boise, Idaho.As of June 2012, AmazonLocal offers daily deals to over 100 regions in 29 U.S. states. AmazonLocal acts primarily as a deal aggregator; some of the deals are actually offered through LivingSocial, a firm in which Amazon has heavily invested.

]AmazonWireless
In July 2009, Amazon.com launched their AmazonWireless website, which offers cellular devices and service plans for Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile in the US.