In revenue size, Amazon is the biggest internet-based company globally. Amazon started in 1995 as a website that only sold books.

The founder Jeff Bezos had a vision for the company’s exponential growth and e-commerce domination.

He imagined Amazon to be “an everything store” and that the best way to succeed online was to grow big and fast.

Today, Amazon sells everything from books to groceries to shipping container houses. It has become a one-stop shop, and you can buy products and services from Amazon.

The investors’ trust in Amazon has been evident – its stock has been one of the most sought after, due to the company’s immense growth over the years. Plenty of new investors are also showing interest in buying it. For example, how to buy Amazon shares in the UK has been a popular search query for a long time in the UK.

Fun Fact:

“Amazon” wasn’t the company’s original name.

Choosing the “right” name

Jeff Bezos initially wanted to give the company the magical sounding name “Cadabra.” (from Abracadabra). But Amazon’s first lawyer, Todd Tarbert, convinced him that the name sounded too similar to “Cadaver”, especially over the phone. Thank the stars that we don’t have to say, “I bought this shirt on Cadabra  (or Cadaver).”

Bezos also liked the name “Relentless”. However, he finally chose “Amazon” because he wanted the company to be named after the largest river in the world.

Stage II — How Jeff helped Amazon.com make a difference

After sorting the name, Amazon.com was registered on the 1st of November 1994. But what to sell?

At the time, Bezos wanted to build some form of an online retailer but wasn’t sure what to sell. He later settled on books after some research. They were comparatively easy to source, package and distribute.

Amazon was not the first company to run this business strategy. Another company, Computer Literacy (a Silicon Valley bookstore), started selling its wares online as early as 1991.

The difference, however, was the greater convenience Amazon.com had to offer. It was based on a model of delivering online orders directly to the customer’s address anywhere in the world.

As we all know, Amazon.com is now about a lot more than just books today. According to Bezos, this was always the plan.

He envisioned that Amazon was not just an online retailer selling consumer products from the company’s very beginnings.

Bezos visioned the company being a technology company at heart whose real business was to simplify online transactions for its customers.

Expanded shores of Amazon.com

After following Bezos’ initial business plan, Amazon expanded into selling computer games and music in 1998.

Around the same time, Amazon also expanded its services internationally by purchasing other online bookstores in Germany and the UK.

After some years, Amazon expanded into selling consumer electronics, software, video games, home-improvement items, games, toys and much more.

And in the mid-2000s, Amazon launched its Amazon Web Services (AWS). This innovation matched Bezos’ initial ambition to involve Amazon as a tech company rather than an online retailer exclusively.

Amazon grew its AWS portfolio with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) by 2006. After that, their Simple Storage Service (S3) began no long after.

Amazon’s expansion into digital services like EC2 and S3 would significantly boost the company’s revenues. Today, they are the bulk of the income for Amazon Web Services.

In 2007 Amazon unveiled the first Kindle e-readers. These relatively low-cost handheld tablets invigorate the e-book market, and by 2012 the Kindle constitute about 50% of all Android-operated tablet sales.

The success of Kindle led to Amazon entering the e-book publishing market in 2011 with its Amazon Publishing service. That same year the company announced that e-book sales were outselling traditional printed books.

Since then, the company has expanded into many other services and industries. Today you can get “anything” ranging from products to internet services from the Amazon company. These include fresh shipping produce, drone delivery, and many more innovations. 

Amazon also recently began operations at their very own airport.