Amazon is one of the most successful and influential companies in the world, with a market value of over $1.33 trillion as of Sep 2023. It is also one of the Big Five American technology companies, along with Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Amazon offers a wide range of products and services, from e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence, to smart devices, online advertising, gaming, publishing, and more.
But how much do you really know about this giant corporation? Here are 10 interesting facts about Amazon that you may not have heard of before.
1. Amazon was founded in a garage and held its meetings at Barnes and Noble.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, who quit his job as a vice president at a Wall Street firm to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. He started the company in his garage in Bellevue, Washington, and initially named it Cadabra, as in "abracadabra". However, he changed the name to Amazon after his lawyer misheard it as "cadaver".
In the early stages of Amazon, Bezos, his then-wife MacKenzie Bezos, and Amazon's first employee Shel Kaphan held their meetings inside their local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Ironically, Barnes and Noble later became one of Amazon's main competitors in the online book market.
2. Amazon owns the domain name relentless.com.
Before Bezos settled on the name Amazon, he also considered naming his company Relentless, which reflected his vision of building a relentless customer-centric business. He liked the name so much that he bought the domain name relentless.com in 1994, and still owns it today. If you type relentless.com in your browser, you will be redirected to the Amazon.com homepage.
3. Amazon launched as an online bookstore but soon expanded into other categories.
Amazon started as an online bookstore, selling its first book in July 1995. The book was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter. Bezos chose to sell books online because he saw a huge potential in the global book market, which had over 3 million titles in print at the time.
However, Bezos had a bigger vision for his company and soon expanded into other product categories, such as music, videos, electronics, toys, games, and more. He also launched Amazon Marketplace in 2000, which allowed third-party sellers to sell their products on Amazon.com. Today, Amazon sells over 12 million products across 35 categories and has over 2.5 million sellers on its platform.
4. Amazon launched an auction site and a search engine to compete with eBay and Google.
In Amazon's early stages as a public company, it launched an auction site in 1999, called Amazon Auctions, to compete with its rivals in the e-commerce space, such as eBay and Yahoo. The day Amazon launched the auction site, its shares soared over 8%. However, the auction site failed to gain traction and was eventually replaced by Amazon zShops, which later became Amazon Marketplace.
Amazon also launched a search engine in 2004, called A9.com, which aimed to provide a better search experience for online shoppers. A9.com also started a project called Block View, which was a visual Yellow Pages that allowed users to see the street view of addresses and directions to their destinations. This was before Google launched its Street View feature on its map application in 2007. A9.com still exists today, but it mainly focuses on providing advertising technology and search solutions for Amazon and other clients.
5. Amazon users can donate to charities when they shop.
Amazon has a program called AmazonSmile, which allows its users to support charities of their choice when they shop at smile.amazon.com. The AmazonSmile Foundation donates 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the selected charitable organizations. Since its launch in 2013, AmazonSmile has donated over $300 million to over 1.5 million charities. Some of the most popular charities supported by AmazonSmile users include St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the American Red Cross, ASPCA, and The Nature Conservancy.
6. Amazon piloted an augmented reality app and a 3D smartphone.
Amazon has experimented with various technologies to enhance its customer experience, such as augmented reality and 3D. In 2014, Amazon launched an app called Amazon Flow, which could identify millions of products from tissue boxes to book covers using the phone's camera. With Amazon Flow, users didn't have to memorize their shopping lists, as the app allowed them to take pictures of the items they wanted to buy and add them to their cart. However, the app was discontinued in 2016, and its functionality was integrated into the main Amazon app.
In the same year, Amazon also launched its first and only smartphone, called the Fire Phone, which featured a 3D display and four front-facing cameras that tracked the user's head movements. The phone also had a feature called Firefly, which could recognize over 100 million items, such as songs, movies, books, and products, and link them to Amazon's online store. However, the phone was a commercial flop, and Amazon stopped selling it in 2015, after losing $170 million on the device.
7. Amazon owns over 40 subsidiaries, including IMDb, Twitch, and Whole Foods.
Amazon has acquired over 100 companies since its inception and owns over 40 subsidiaries. Some of the most notable ones include:
- IMDb: The Internet Movie Database, which is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV, and celebrity information. Amazon acquired IMDb in 1998 for $55 million.
- Twitch: The leading live streaming platform for gamers, which has over 30 million daily active users and over 9 million streamers. Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014 for $970 million.
- Whole Foods: The largest natural and organic foods supermarket chain in the U.S., which has over 500 stores and 100,000 employees. Amazon acquired Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion, which was its largest acquisition to date.
- Ring: The smart home security company, which produces video doorbells, cameras, and alarm systems that can be controlled via an app. Amazon acquired Ring in 2018 for $1.2 billion.
- MGM: The legendary Hollywood studio, which owns over 4,000 film titles and 17,000 TV episodes, including franchises such as James Bond, Rocky, and The Hobbit. Amazon acquired MGM in 2021 for $8.45 billion, which was its second-largest acquisition to date.
8. Amazon has over 1.5 million employees and over 200 million Prime members.
Amazon is one of the largest employers in the world, with over 1.5 million employees. The majority of its workforce is based in the U.S., where it has over 950,000 employees. Amazon also hires thousands of seasonal workers during peak periods, such as the holiday season and Prime Day.
Amazon Prime is one of the most popular and successful loyalty programs in the world, with over 200 million members. Prime members pay an annual or monthly fee to enjoy benefits such as free and fast shipping, unlimited access to Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading, and more. Prime members also spend more than twice as much as non-Prime members on Amazon.com, according to a report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
9. Amazon has over 175 fulfillment centers and over 100,000 robots.
Amazon has one of the most advanced and efficient logistics networks in the world, which enables it to deliver millions of orders every day. Amazon has over 175 fulfillment centers around the world, which are massive warehouses where products are stored, picked, packed, and shipped. Some of these fulfillment centers are over 1 million square feet in size, which is equivalent to 28 football fields.
Amazon also uses over 100,000 robots in its fulfillment centers, which help to move inventory, sort packages, and load trucks. These robots include the Kiva robots, which are autonomous mobile robots that can lift and carry shelves of products, and the Amazon Scout, which are six-wheeled delivery robots that can navigate sidewalks and deliver packages to customers' doorsteps.
10. Amazon is developing a satellite internet service and a flying warehouse.
Amazon is not only a leader in e-commerce but also a pioneer in space technology. Amazon has a subsidiary called Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides cloud computing services to millions of customers, including NASA, Netflix, and Spotify. AWS also has a division called AWS Ground Station, which provides satellite communication and data processing services to customers who want to access space data and applications.
One of the most ambitious projects that Amazon is working on is Project Kuiper, which is a satellite internet service that aims to provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world. Project Kuiper plans to launch over 3,000 satellites into low Earth orbit and compete with other satellite internet providers, such as SpaceX's Starlink and OneWeb.
Another futuristic project that Amazon has patented is a flying warehouse, or an airborne fulfillment center (AFC), which is a giant airship that can store and deliver products using drones. The AFC would hover over areas where there is high demand for certain products, such as sporting events, concerts, or festivals, and dispatch drones to deliver the products to customers within minutes. The AFC would also be replenished by smaller airships that would carry inventory, personnel, and fuel.
These are some of the interesting facts about Amazon that you may not have known before. Amazon is a company that is constantly innovating and expanding its horizons, and it is hard to predict what it will do next. What do you think of Amazon and its projects? Let us know in the comments below.
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