Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995. It started as an on-line bookstore but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs and MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and China. It also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products.

On January 15, 2009, a survey published by Verdict Research found that Amazon was the UK's favorite music and video retailer, and came third in overall retail rankings.

Amazon was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called "regret minimization framework", his effort to fend off regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush. While company lore says Bezos wrote the business plan while he and his wife drove from New York to Seattle, that account appears to be apocryphal.

The company began as an online bookstore; while the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books might offer 200,000 titles, an on-line bookstore could offer more. Bezos named the company "Amazon" after the world's biggest river. Since 2000, Amazon's logotype is an arrow leading from A to Z, representing customer satisfaction (as it forms a smile) and the goal to have every product in the alphabet.

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

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual: the company did not expect a profit for four to five years; the strategy was effective. Amazon grew steadily in the late 1990s while other Internet companies grew blindingly fast. Amazon's "slow" growth provoked stockholder complaints: that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the dot-com bubble burst, and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered, and, finally, turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million, just 1¢ per share, on revenues of more than $1 billion, but the profit was symbolically important.

The company remains profitable: net income was $35.3 million in 2003, $588.50 million in 2004, $359 million in 2005, and $190 million in 2006 (including a $662 million charge for R&D in 2006), nevertheless, the firm's cumulative profits remain negative. As of September 2007, the accumulated deficit stood at $1.58 billion. Revenues increased thanks to product diversification and an international presence: $3.9 billion in 2002, $5.3 billion in 2003, $6.9 billion in 2004, $8.5 billion in 2005, and $10.7 billion in 2006.

On November 21, 2005, Amazon entered the S&P 500 index, replacing AT&T after it merged with SBC Communications. On December 31, 2008, Amazon entered the S&P 100 index, replacing Merrill Lynch after it was taken over by Bank of America.

In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing on-line shopping.

The Web site CDNOW (cdnow.com) is powered and hosted by Amazon. Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would similarly bring up Amazon.com's Toys & Games tab; however, this relationship was terminated as the result of a lawsuit.

Amazon.com powers and operates retail web sites for Target, Sears Canada, Benefit Cosmetics, bebe Stores, Timex Corporation, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, and Lacoste. For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer, Benefit Cosmetics' UK entity and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform whereby a customer can interchangeably interact with the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, and phone-based customer service agents. Amazon Web Services also powers AOL's Shop@AOL. Merchant partnerships Amazon.com have offices, fulfillment centers, customer service centers and software development centers across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Amazon.com's headquarters in the PacMed building in Beacon Hill, Seattle.

The company's global headquarters is located on Seattle's Beacon Hill. It has offices throughout other parts of greater Seattle including Union Station and The Columbia Center.

Amazon has announced plans to move its headquarters to the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle beginning in mid-2010, with full occupancy by 2011. This move will consolidate all Seattle employees onto the new 11-building campus.

The company employs software developers in medium- to large-sized centers across the globe. While most of Amazon's software development is in Seattle, other locations include:

Slough (United Kingdom)
Edinburgh (United Kingdom)
Dublin (Ireland)
Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad (India)
Cape Town (South Africa)
Iaşi (Romania)
Shibuya, Tōkyō (Japan)
Beijing (China)
Tempe, Arizona (United States)

Fulfillment centers are located in the following cities, often near airports. Amazon offers warehousing and order-fulfillment for third-party sellers including large companies such as Target Corporation:

North America:
Arizona, USA: Phoenix, Goodyear
Delaware, USA: New Castle
Indiana, USA: Whitestown, Munster, and Plainfield
Kansas, USA: Coffeyville
Kentucky, USA: Campbellsville, Hebron (near CVG), Lexington, and Louisville
Nevada, USA: Fernley and Red Rock (near 4SD)
New Hampshire, USA: Nashua
Pennsylvania, USA: Carlisle, Chambersburg, Hazleton, and Lewisberry
Texas, USA: Dallas/Fort Worth
Virginia, USA
Ontario, Canada: Mississauga (a Canada Post facility)

In March 2009, Amazon announced plans to close three U.S. distribution centers: Red Rock, Nevada; Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; and Munster, Indiana.

Europe:
Amazon.co.uk warehouse, Glenrothes.
Bedfordshire, England: Marston Gate, near Brogborough
Inverclyde, Scotland: Gourock
Fife, Scotland: Glenrothes
Swansea, Wales: Crymlyn Burrows near Jersey Marine
Loiret, France: Orléans-Boigny (2000)
Loiret, France: Orléans-Saran (2007)
Hessen, Germany: Bad Hersfeld
Saxony, Germany: Leipzig

Asia:
Ichikawa,Chiba, Japan
Yachiyo, Chiba, Japan
Sakai,Osaka, Japan
Guangzhou, China
Suzhou, China
Beijing, China

Amazon has steadily branched into retail sales of 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, groceries, and more.

The company launched Amazon.com Auctions, its own Web auctions service, in March 1999. However, it failed to chip away at industry pioneer eBay's juggernaut growth. Amazon Auctions was followed by the launch of a fixed-price marketplace business called zShops in September 1999, and a failed Sotheby's/Amazon partnership called sothebys.amazon.com in November.

Amazon no longer mentions either Auctions or zShops on its main pages and the help page for sellers now only mentions the Marketplace. Old links to zShops now simply redirect to the Amazon home page, while old links to Auctions take users to a transactions history page. New product listings are no longer possible for either service.

Although zShops failed to live up to its expectations, it laid the groundwork for the hugely successful Amazon Marketplace service launched in 2001 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.

Beginning August 2005, Amazon began selling products under its own private label, "Pinzon"; the initial trademark applications suggested the company intended to focus on textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods. In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a larger and more diverse list of goods, and to register a new design consisting of the "word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter O whose space appears at the "one o'clock" position.". The list of products registered for coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry. On September 2008, Amazon filed to have the name registered. While the USPTO has finished its review of the application, Amazon has yet to receive an official registration for the name.

On May 16, 2007 Amazon announced its intention to launch Amazon MP3, its own online music store. The store launched in the US in public beta September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management. This is especially notable as it was the first online offering of DRM-free music from all four major record companies.

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 2008 Amazon expanded into film production and is currently funding the film The Stolen Child with 20th Century Fox.

Amazon.com's customer reviews are monitored for all negative or indecent comments that are directed at anything, or anyone, but the product itself. In regards to the reviews lacking relative restrictions, Robert Spector, who is the author of the book Amazon.com, describes how "when publishers and authors asked Bezos why Amazon.com would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that Amazon.com was ‘taking a different approach...we want to make every book available – the good, the bad, and the ugly...to let truth loose’" (Spector 132).

Reviews for different media of the same product are grouped together (e.g., the review page for a particular film, whether on VHS, Blu-Ray, or DVD, will feature reviews from all three products). Currently, there is no way to only look at reviews for one version of a product.

The domain amazon.com attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey. This was twice the numbers of walmart.com.

Amazon allows users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. As part of their review, users must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. In 2004 a software error accidentally showed the names behind reviews that were submitted anonymously, and some authors were shown to have written glowing reviews of their own books. Amazon created a feature in recent years that allowed users to comment on reviews. Amazon provides an optional badging option for reviewers, e.g., to indicate the real name of the reviewer (based on confirmation of a credit card account) or to indicate that the reviewer is one of the top reviewers by popularity. The U.S. site generally has the most reviews. A review posted on one site is not necessarily visible on another site.

"Search Inside the Book" is a feature which allows customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog. The feature started with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003. There are currently about 250,000 books in the program. Amazon has cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches.

To avoid copyright violations, Amazon.com does not return the computer-readable text of the book but rather a picture of the matching page, disables printing, and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. One author observed that his entire book could be read online by searching a few words. Additionally, customers can purchase online access to the some books via the "Amazon Upgrade" program, although the selection is currently quite limited.

According to information in Amazon.com discussion forums, Amazon derives about 40 percent of its sales from affiliates whom they call Associates, and third party sellers who list and sell products on the Amazon websites. Associates receive a commission for referring customers to Amazon by placing links on their websites to the Amazon homepage or to specific products. If a referral results in a sale, the Associate receives a commission from Amazon. Worldwide, Amazon has "over 900,000 members" in its affiliate programs. Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. A new affiliate product, aStore, allows Associates to embed a subset of Amazon products within, or linked to from, another website.

Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazon's World Wide Web sites in 2007. Selling on Amazon has become more popular as Amazon expanded into a variety of categories beyond media and built a variety of features to support volume selling. Unlike eBay, Amazon sellers do not have to maintain separate payment accounts; all payments and payment security are handled by Amazon itself.

According to the Internet audience measurement website Compete.com, Amazon attracts approximately 50 million U.S. consumers to its website on a monthly basis.

In April 1998, Amazon bought the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). In August 1998, Amazon bought Cambridge, Massachusetts-based PlanetAll for 800,000 shares of Amazon stock. PlanetAll operated a web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. In the same deal, Amazon acquired Sunnyvale-based Junglee.com, an XML-based data mining startup for 1.6 million shares of Amazon stock. The two deals together were valued at about $280 million at the time. In June 1999, Amazon bought Alexa Internet, Accept.com, and Exchange.com in a set of stock deals worth approximately $645 million. In 2003, Amazon purchased the rival online music retailer CD Now. In 2004, Amazon purchased Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce website. It also debuted A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology. In March 2005, Amazon acquired BookSurge, a print on demand company, and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company. In July 2005, Amazon purchased CreateSpace.com (formerly CustomFlix), a Scotts Valley, California-based distributor of on-demand DVDs. Since the acquisition, CreateSpace has expanded its on-line services to include on-demand books and CDs, as well as video downloads. On July 30, 2007, the National Archives announced that it would make thousands of historic films available for purchase through CreateSpace. In February 2006, Amazon acquired Shopbop, a Madison, Wisconsin-based retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women.

In May 2007, Amazon acquired dpreview.com, a London-based digital photography review website created by Phil Askey as his personal hobby website and Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States. In January 2007 created Endless.com, a separate e-commerce brand focusing on shoes. In January 2008, Amazon announced that it would acquire audiobook provider Audible.com for $300 million in cash. In June 2008, Amazon announced that it had acquired Fabric.com, an online fabric store. In July 2008, Amazon's IMDb subsidiary purchased Box Office Mojo, a site that tracks movie sales in theatres. In August 2008, Amazon announced it had an agreement to purchase Victoria, B.C. based AbeBooks, seller of new, used, out of print and rare books. Later that month Amazon announced that it would acquire Seattle-based Shelfari, a book-based social network site, for an undisclosed sum. As part of its acquisition of Abebooks Amazon also got an additional stake in Shelfari's competitor LibraryThing, which AbeBooks had previously purchased a 40 percent stake in, and whole ownership of Bookfinder.com, Gojaba.com, and listing-management service FillZ, all owned by AbeBooks at the time of acquisition. In October 2008 acquired Reflexive Entertainment, a casual video game development company. In July 2009 Amazon agreed to acquire Zappos, an online shoe and apparel retailer. The deal is expected to close in fall 2009.

Amazon.com has incorporated a number of products and services into its shopping model, either through development or acquisition. The Honor System was originally launched in 2001 to allow customers to make donations or buy digital content, with Amazon collecting 2.9 percent of the payment plus a flat fee of 30¢. The service was discontinued on December 11, 2008. It has been succeeded by Amazon Payments. Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002. The service provides programmatic access to many features leveraged behind the scenes on its website. Amazon also created "channels" to benefit certain causes. In 2004, Amazon's "Presidential Candidates" allowed customers to donate $5–200 to the campaigns of 2004 U.S. presidential hopefuls. Amazon has periodically reactivated a Red Cross donation channel after such tragedies as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. After the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Amazon set up an online donation channel to the American Red Cross, waiving its processing fee. By January 2005, nearly 200,000 individuals had donated over $15.7 million in the US alone.

Amazon Prime offers customers unlimited expedited shipping with no minimum purchase amount for a flat annual fee. The service also offers discounted priority shipping rates. Amazon launched the program in the continental United States in 2005, in Japan in June 2007, in the United Kingdom and Germany in November 2007, and in France (as "Amazon Premium") in October 2008. Launched in 2005, Amazon Shorts offers exclusive short form content, including short stories and non-fiction pieces from best-selling authors, all available for immediate download at 49¢. As of June 2007, the program has over 1,700 pieces and is adding about 50 new pieces per week. 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 gigabytes in size, can be stored in S3 and distributed via HTTP or BitTorrent. The service charges monthly fees for data stored and for data transferred. In April 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), a distributed queue messaging service. In August 2006, Amazon launched product wikis (later folded into Amapedia) and discussion forums for certain products using guidelines that follow standard message board conventions. In August 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a virtual site farm, allowing users to use the Amazon infrastructure with its high reliability to run diverse applications ranging from running simulations to web hosting. In 2008, Amazon improved the service adding Elastic Block Store (EBS), offering persistent storage for Amazon EC2 instances and Elastic IP addresses, static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing.

In January 2007 Amazon launched Amapedia, a collaborative wiki for user-generated content to replace ProductWiki. In March 2007, Amazon launched an online video on demand service, Amazon Unbox. In September 2007, Amazon launched a new music store (currently in beta) called Amazon MP3, which sells downloadable tracks, all in the MP3 format and most recorded at 256 kilobits per second variable bitrate (VBR). Amazon's terms of use agreements legally restrict use of the music, but Amazon does not use DRM to enforce those terms. Amazon MP3 sells music from the Big 4 record labels: EMI, Universal, Warner Bros. Records, and Sony BMG, as well as many independents. Previous to the launch of this service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a similar music store with a variable pricing model based on demand. In August 2007 Amazon launched Amazon Vine, which allows top product reviewers free access to pre-release products from vendors participating in the program. Reviewers may either return the used product to Amazon, or post a review and keep the product, within a few months of receipt. In August 2007 Amazon launched a payment service specifically targeted at developers called Flexible Payment Service FPS. Amazon FPS has facilities for developing many different charging models including micro-payments. The service also gives developers easy access to Amazon customers. In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content over "Whispernet", a free EV-DO wireless service on the Sprint Nextel network. The screen uses E Ink technology to reduce battery consumption. In 2008 Amazon claimed its library had grown to 200,000 titles. In December 2007, Amazon introduced SimpleDB, a database system, allowing users of its other infrastructure to utilize a high reliability high performance database system. In August 2007, Amazon launched an invitation-only beta-test for online grocery delivery. It has since rolled out in several Seattle, Washington suburbs.

In January 2008 Amazon announced they would be rolling out their MP3 service to their subsidiary websites worldwide throughout the year. On December 1, 2008, Amazon MP3 was made available in the UK. At the beginning of September, IMDB and Amazon.com launched a Music metadata browsing site with wiki-like user contribution. In November, Amazon partnered with manufacturers including Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and electronics manufacturer Transcend to offer products in minimal packaging. This reduces environmental impact of the packaging and frustration with opening "clamshell" type security packaging. In Amazon Web Services launched a public beta of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server. Amazon Connect enables authors to post remarks on their book pages to customers who have bought their books. WebStore by Amazon allows businesses to create e-commerce websites using Amazon technology. Merchants can customize their sites using their own photos and branding. Sellers pay a commission of 7 percent, which includes credit-card processing fees and fraud protection, and a subscription fee of $59.95/month for an unlimited number of webstores and listings.

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