Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet and was one of the iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst, Amazon faced skepticism about its business model, but it made its first annual profit in 2003.
Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore, though it soon diversified its product lines, adding DVDs, music CDs, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and more.
Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, China, and Japan. It ships globally on selected products.

History and business model
The Web sites of Borders (borders.com, borders.co.uk), Waldenbooks (waldenbooks.com), Virgin Megastores (virginmega.com), CDNOW (cdnow.com), and HMV (hmv.com) are powered and hosted by Amazon. Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into one's 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, the NBA, Sears Canada, Sears UK, Benefit Cosmetics, Bebe Stores, Timex Corporation, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare and Bombay Company.
For a number of these companies, specifically the UK ones like Marks & Spencer and Mothercare, Amazon provides the multi-channel solutions not just the web site. That means that it also powers the in store terminals, customer-service applications and phone-sales terminals.
It also powers, although does not host, AOL's Shop@AOL service. It achieves this via Web Services technology.

Merchant partnerships

Locations
The company's global headquarters is located on Seattle, Washington's Beacon Hill. It has offices throughout other parts of greater Seattle.
Headquarters
The company employs software developers in modest- to large-sized centers across the globe. International locations include:

Slough (England)
Edinburgh (Scotland)
Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad (India)
Cape Town (South Africa)
Iaşi (Romania)
Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan) (closed in 2005)
Beijing (China). Software development centers
Fulfillment centers are located in the following cities, often near airports:

• Arizona, USA: Phoenix


• Delaware, USA: New Castle


• Kansas, USA: Coffeyville


• Kentucky, USA: Campbellsville, Hebron (near CVG), and Lexington


• Massachusetts, USA: Springfield (new as of early 2007)


• Nevada, USA: Fernley and Red Rock (near 4SD)


• Washington, USA: Seattle


• Pennsylvania, USA: Chambersburg, Carlisle, and Lewisberry


• Texas, USA: Dallas/Fort Worth


• Ontario, Canada: Mississauga

• Munster, Republic of Ireland: Cork


• Bedfordshire, England, UK: Marston Gate


• Inverclyde, Scotland, UK: Gourock


• Fife, Scotland, UK: Glenrothes


• Swansea, Wales, UK: (Planned)


• Loiret, France: Orléans-Boigny (2000),


• Loiret, France: Orléans-Saran (2007),


• Hesse, Germany: Bad Hersfeld


• Saxony, Germany: Leipzig

• Chiba, Japan


• Guangzhou, China


• Shanghai, China


• Beijing, China

North America:
Arizona, USA: Phoenix
Delaware, USA: New Castle
Kansas, USA: Coffeyville
Kentucky, USA: Campbellsville, Hebron (near CVG), and Lexington
Massachusetts, USA: Springfield (new as of early 2007)
Nevada, USA: Fernley and Red Rock (near 4SD)
Washington, USA: Seattle
Pennsylvania, USA: Chambersburg, Carlisle, and Lewisberry
Texas, USA: Dallas/Fort Worth
Ontario, Canada: Mississauga
Europe:
Munster, Republic of Ireland: Cork
Bedfordshire, England, UK: Marston Gate
Inverclyde, Scotland, UK: Gourock
Fife, Scotland, UK: Glenrothes
Swansea, Wales, UK: (Planned)
Loiret, France: Orléans-Boigny (2000),
Loiret, France: Orléans-Saran (2007),
Hesse, Germany: Bad Hersfeld
Saxony, Germany: Leipzig
Asia:
Chiba, Japan
Guangzhou, China
Shanghai, China
Beijing, China Fulfillment and warehousing
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, 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. 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. Amazon Marketplace's main rival today is eBay's Half.com service.
On May 16, 2007 Amazon announced it intends to launch its own online music store. Downloads will be sold without copy-protection. The store is to launch "later this year."

Product lines
A popular feature of Amazon is the ability for 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. Such rating scales provide a basic idea of the popularity and dependability of a product.
Search Inside the Book is a feature which makes it possible for customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog. AStore is a new affiliate product that allows Associates to embedded a subset of Amazon products within, or linked to from, another website.

Website

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 US$280 million at the time. Most staff of both firms were absorbed by Amazon in early 1999. These employees went on to build community-focused features for the Amazon Web site, including Amazon.com Auctions, Amazon.com Marketplace, Friends & Favorites, and Purchase Circles.
In June 1999, Amazon bought Alexa Internet, Accept.com, and Exchange.com in a set of stock deals worth approximately US$645 million.
In 2004, Amazon purchased Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce Web site. It also debuted A9.com, a company focused on researching, and building innovative technology. One of the technologies A9.com was working on was a search engine with a "Search Inside the Book" feature allowing users to search within the text of books as well as searching for text on the Web. Another A9 technology was its "Find It on the Block" feature allowing users to find not just the phone number, address, map, and directions for a business; but to see a picture of it, and all the businesses and shops on that same street.
In March 2005, Amazon acquired BookSurge, a print on demand company and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company.
In July 2005, Amazon purchased CreateSpace (formerly CustomFlix), a Scotts Valley, CA-based distributor of on-demand DVDs.
Amazon spinoffs include search technology company A9.com and shoe and handbag store Endless.com. Acquisitions and spinoffs
In 2002, Amazon became the exclusive retailer for the much-hyped Segway Human Transporter. Bezos was an early supporter of the Segway before its details were made public.
On June 21, 2003, Amazon coordinated what was at the time one of the largest sales and distribution events in e-commerce history with the sale of over 1.3 million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, since beaten by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with a sale of over 2 million copies preordered in 2007.
On July 16, 2005, Amazon celebrated its 10th anniversary by telecasting a worldwide live concert hosted by Bill Maher and artists such as Bob Dylan and Norah Jones.

Noteworthy events

Innovations

Main article: Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services

Main article: Amazon S3 Amazon S3

Main article: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon EC2

Main article: Amazon Mechanical Turk Amazon Mechanical Turk
On August 2, 2007 Amazon launched a payment service specifically targeted at developers. Amazon FPS has facilities for developing many different charging models including micro-payments. The service also gives developers easy access to Amazon customers.

Amazon Flexible Payments Service
Amazon announced Amazon Connect in 2005. It enables authors to post remarks that appear at the bottom of the detail pages for each of their books and on the Amazon home page of those who have bought their books.

Amazon Connect
Amazon Shorts is a program launched in 2005. The program offers exclusive short form content including short stories and non-fiction pieces from best selling authors, all available for immediate download at $0.49. As of June 2007, the program has over 1,700 pieces and is adding about 50 new pieces per week.

Amazon Shorts
In August 2006, Amazon launched product wikis (later folded into Amapedia) and discussion forums for certain products. There are set guidelines that follow standard message board conventions. Discussion boards were later expanded to include deals in the Gold Box

Discussion boards
In February 2005, Amazon launched Amazon Prime in the continental United States.

Amazon Prime
In 2001, Amazon was one of the first online stores to begin accepting donations to the Red Cross on behalf of 9/11 victims. For several days the company dedicated its entire home page for this cause.
In 2004, Amazon launched its Presidential Candidates feature, whereby customers could donate from US$5 to US$200 to the campaigns of U.S. presidential hopefuls, resurrecting the Amazon Honor System for the purpose. The Honor System was originally launched in 2001 as a way for Amazon customers to "tip" their "favorite Web sites and to buy digital content on the Web," Amazon collecting 2.9% of the payment plus a flat fee of 30 cents. It has never been shut down, but had fallen into relative disuse.
At the end of 2004, with the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Amazon set up an online donation channel to the American Red Cross using the Honor System, waiving its processing fee. As of January 3, 2005, over 162,000 individuals had donated over US$13.1 million in this way. The same week, Amazon created similar channels for the British, Canadian, French, German, and Japanese Red Cross organizations via its international sites. Over 7,000 Britons donated more than $350,000; 900 Canadians over $56,000; 660 French over $23,000; 2,900 Germans over $145,000; and 1,900 Japanese over $66,000.
Amazon reactivated its Red Cross donation channel when Hurricane Katrina struck at the end of August 2005. As of September 8, over 98,000 payments had been made totaling over US$10.7 million.

Donations

Main article: Amapedia Amazon Vine

Controversies
In 1999 the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative of Minneapolis, Minnesota sued Amazon.com for trademark infringement. The cooperative had been using the name "Amazon" since 1970, but reached an out-of-court agreement to share the name with the on-line retailer.

Trademark infringement
The company has been controversial for its alleged use of patents as a competitive hindrance. The "1-click patent"

Patent use
The company has been sued for alleged patent infringement a number of times, among them:

Pinpoint v. Amazon.com
Charles E. Hill & Associates v. Amazon.com
Soverain Software LLC v. Amazon.com
IBM v. Amazon.com
British Technology Group v. Amazon.com
Cendant Publishing v. Amazon.com Patent infringement
In 2006 Amazon.co.uk severely limited products that it (or its Marketplace sellers) will ship to the Republic of Ireland, though it will still ship to Northern Ireland. Irish shoppers are now limited to books, CDs, and DVDs only. This is due to WEEE regulations, which Ireland has implemented extremely strictly, while the UK has not.
During 2007, Irish orders began to be fulfilled from Ireland, reducing delivery times significantly. This is connected to Amazon ceasing to use Royal Mail as a delivery agent.

Shipping destinations
Amazon.com does not publish its toll-free customer service number (+1-800-201-7575) on its own web site. Customers are instead asked to submit written service requests (which are answered by e-mail) or to use a click-to-call service to be connected by phone to an available service representative.

Customer service
In November 2000, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) began an unsuccessful campaign to organize Amazon.com employees at several of their fulfillment centers. At the same time, the Communications Workers of America undertook a campaign to unionize some 400 customer-service representatives in Seattle. Neither group of employees found the external organizations' attempt signficant; neither union obtained enough interest to petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election.

Labor relations
In late June 2007, shortly after the death of professional wrestler Chris Benoit, Amazon displayed a special note on search results pages for the term "WWE": "Tragic news from the WWE. Wrestler Chris Benoit and his wife and son have been found dead in their Georgia home, and police are investigating the situation as a possible murder-suicide." The caption was then followed by a photo and a link to purchase the WWE Chris Benoit: Hard Knocks DVD. Amazon.com later removed the offending message after widespread complaints in the professional wrestling community.

Chris Benoit DVD
Amazon carried two cockfighting magazines and two dog fighting videos and was sued by the Human Society on the basis that cockfighting is illegal. (http://www.hsus.org/in_the_courts/docket/amazon.html)

The Humane Society of the United States v. Amazon.com, Inc., et al
The section could be improved by integrating relevant items into the main text and removing inappropriate items.

Some of the words in Amazon.com URLs, usually referring to various components of the company's web site software, are nods to the Amazon River and Brazil:

• obidos (the name of the old page-rendering engine) comes from Óbidos, the meeting place of the Amazon's tributaries;
  várzea is Portuguese (Brazil's main language) for a forest flooded after heavy rains, as parts of the Amazon forest are;
  gp is short for Gurupa (the page-rendering system that had completely replaced Obidos by late 2006), a region in Brazil near the mouth of the Amazon.
  Similarly Brazil- or Amazon-themed names are used for many other Amazon.com software systems less exposed to the end users, e.g.:
  
  
  
  • one of the mass mail sending systems is Correios (after the Brazilian postal service);
    the source code version control system is Brazil;
    a remote procedure call protocol is Iquitos;
    Urubamba is a software system interacting with Google's AdSense.
    A 2004 glitch in Amazon.ca's review system revealed that many well-established authors were anonymously giving themselves glowing reviews, with some revealed to be anonymously giving "rival" authors terrible reviews. The glitch in the system was fixed and those reviews have since been removed or made anonymous.
    An easter egg can be found on Amazon.com's website. An invisible link at the very bottom of the "Directory of All Stores" page leads to a February 2002 tribute to David Risher, "Amazon.com's favorite site surfer". See also