On February 2, 2021, Amazon announced that Jeff Bezos would step down as CEO to become executive chair of Amazon's board in Q3 of 2021. It purchased the Whole Foods Market supermarket chain in 2017. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems to automate its inventory management business. That year, Amazon also started Fulfillment by Amazon which allowed individuals and small companies to sell items through the company's Internet site. In 2006, it grew its AWS portfolio when Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which rented computer processing power, provided Simple Storage Service (S3), and rented data storage via the Internet, also became available. In 2002, it launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provided data on website popularity, Internet traffic patterns, and other statistics for marketers and developers. The following year, it began selling video games, consumer electronics, home improvement items, software, games, and toys. It began selling music and videos in 1998, and began international operations by acquiring online sellers of books in the United Kingdom and Germany. The company's largest campus outside the United States was inaugurated in Hyderabad, India in September 2019.Īmazon was founded in July 1994 by Jeff Bezos, who chose the Seattle area for its abundance of technical talent, as Microsoft was in the area.

13.2 Additional hiring as a result of pandemic.

12.16 Anti-vaccination and non-scientific cancer 'cures'.

12.14 Collection of data and surveillance.

12.12 Facial recognition technology and law enforcement.

12.11 Nashville Operations Center of Excellence.

12.10 Seattle head tax and houselessness services.

12.9 Conflict of interest with the CIA and DOD.

12.6 Comments by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.12.3 Selling counterfeit, unsafe and discarded items.6.5 Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services.It also produces consumer electronics-most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs.Īmazon has been criticized for customer data collection practices, a toxic work culture, tax avoidance, and anti-competitive behavior. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, film and television content through Amazon Studios, and has been the owner of film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer since March 2022. Īmazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible units. It is the second-largest private employer in the United States. 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 over 200 million subscribers worldwide. As of 2021, it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service through AWS, live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share. Īmazon has earned a reputation as a disruptor of well-established industries through technological innovation and mass scale. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer. Its other subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. It has multiple subsidiaries including Amazon Web Services (cloud computing), Zoox ( autonomous vehicles), Kuiper Systems (satellite Internet), and Amazon Lab126 (computer hardware R&D). Initially an online marketplace for books, it has expanded into a multitude of product categories: a strategy that has earned it the moniker The Everything Store.

It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.Īmazon was founded by Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. It has been referred to as 'one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world', and is one of the world's most valuable brands. ( / ˈ æ m ə z ɒ n/ AM-ə-zon) is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.

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