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Amazon (company) - Wikipedia

Amazon (company)

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Amazon.com, Inc.[^1] (doing business as Amazon)1 is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, entertainment, and artificial intelligence.2 Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington,3 the company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories, referred to as “The Everything Store”.4 Amazon has been described as a Big Tech company.5

It is best known as the world’s biggest online shopping retailer and marketplace, offering a wide range of products and services. Amazon sells books, electronics, pharmaceuticals, car parts, video games, dining products, jewelry, food, music, and sports equipment.6

The company has multiple subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides 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 its presence as a physical retailer.7 Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, MGM+, Amazon Music, Twitch, Audible, and Wondery8 units. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing; produces and distributes film and television content through Amazon MGM Studios, including the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio it 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.9101112 As of 2023, it is the world’s largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service provider through AWS,13 live-streaming service provider 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 200 million subscribers worldwide.1516 It is the second-largest private employer in the United States17 and the second-largest company in the world and the United States by revenue as of 2024 (after Walmart).18 As of October 2024, Amazon is the 12th-most visited website in the world, and 84% of its traffic comes from the United States.1920 Amazon has been criticized for its business practices, including surveillance partnerships, poor working conditions, anti-union efforts, environmental harm, anticompetitive behavior, censorship controversies, and exploitative treatment of small businesses and suppliers.

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. /ˈæməzɒn/, AM-ə-zon; UK also/ˈæməzən/, AM-ə-zən ↩

  2. “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos”. PBS. Archived from the original on January 16, 2020. Retrieved February 15, 2020. ↩

  3. 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. ↩

  4. 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. ↩

  5. “Big Tech”. sdialliance.org. Retrieved December 29, 2025. ↩

  6. “Amazon: From Books to Everything”. June 17, 2024. Archived from the original on January 2, 2026. Retrieved January 17, 2026. ↩

  7. “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”. Business Wire (Press release). August 24, 2017. Archived from the original on September 13, 2021. Retrieved September 13, 2021. ↩

  8. 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. ↩

  9. 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. ↩

  10. 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. ↩

  11. “How to compete with Amazon”. Fortune. Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved September 27, 2022. ↩

  12. “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. ↩

  13. “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. ↩

  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. Archived from the original on January 22, 2022. Retrieved December 20, 2021. ↩

  16. 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. ↩

  17. 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. ↩

  18. “Fortune Global 500”. Fortune. Archived from the original on January 14, 2026. Retrieved August 19, 2024. ↩

  19. “Top Websites Ranking”. Similarweb. Archived from the original on February 10, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2021. ↩

  20. “amazon.com”. similarweb.com. Archived from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2024. ↩

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