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AMAZON:

About:

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.

It has been often referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world," and is often regarded as one of the world's most valuable brands.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. Initially an online marketplace for books, it has expanded into a multitude of product categories, a strategy that has earned it the description The Everything Store.

Amazon has earned a reputation as a disruptor of well-established industries through technological innovation and "aggressive" reinvestment of profits into capital expenditures.

As of 2023, 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.

Name origin:

Originally, Amazon was an online bookstore called Cadabra, intended as a reference to the word "abracadabra" (as in, magic). However, Jeff Bezos' first lawyer pointed out that the reference was too obscure. Plus, when you were on the phone, people sometimes heard "Cadaver" instead.

In the mid-'90s Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie Tuttle, started exploring other possibilities. They registered the domain names Awake.com, Browse.com, and Bookmall.com. They also registered the domain name Relentless.com and kept it (if you type that into your browser today, you'll be redirected to Amazon.com).

Bezos then started paging through the "A" section of the dictionary. At the time, website listings were alphabetized, so he wanted a word that started with "A." When he landed on the word "Amazon," the name of the largest river on the planet, he decided that was the perfect name for what would become earth's largest bookstore.

According to Bezos: "This is not only the largest river in the world, it's many times larger than the next biggest river. It blows all other rivers away."

The arrow shape in the logo extends from the letter “A” to the letter “Z” while curving to form a smile, representing customer satisfaction, endless product selection, and end-to-end service.

Evolution of the Amazon logo