Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994, starting out as an online bookstore. Bezos was a former Wall Street hedge fund executive. He chose the name “Amazon” primarily because it began with the first letter of the alphabet and because of its association with the vast South American river. On the basis of research he conducted, Bezos concluded that books would be the most logical product initially to sell online. Amazon was not actually the first online bookstore; Computer Literacy, a Silicon Valley bookstore, began selling books from its inventory online in 1991. Amazon aimed to be different by promising to deliver any book to any reader anywhere.
While Amazon famously started as a bookstore, Bezos contended from its start that the site was not merely a retailer of consumer products and that it was a technology company whose business was simplifying online transactions for consumers.
Amazon’s business strategy was often met with skepticism. Financial journalists and analysts claimed that it would lose to established bookselling chains, such as Barnes & Noble, once they launched their own websites. The lack of profits seemed to justify these claims.
Bezos dismissed critics as not understanding the massive growth potential of the internet. His slogan for the company was “Get Big Fast”. By December 1996, after its first full year in operation, it reached 180,000 customer accounts and by October 1997, it had 1,000,000 customer accounts. The company’s revenues jumped from $15.7 million in 1996 to $148 million in 1997 to $610 million in 1998. In May 1997, Amazon became a public company, listing itself on the NASDAQ stock exchange and raising $54 million.
Amazon began selling music and videos in 1998, when it also began international operations. The following year, the company also sold video games, consumer electronics, home-improvement items, software, games, and toys in addition to other items. Amazon started Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud computing platform, in 2002.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Amazoncom
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/10/business/amazon-history-timeline/index.html
Maxwell, I like how you analyzed Bezo's viewpoint of the expansion of his corporation as a positive to society. From a technological perspective, Amazon definitely followed the idea of "Get Big Fast." Its all-encompassing cloud computing platform AWS allowed its clients to create massive applications and host websites with extreme ease and speed. As you mentioned in the article, however, this idea of "Get Big Fast" does not seem to be compatible, or ethical, in contemporary society.
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