Amazon, among the world's largest companies by market capitalization, was founded in 1994 as an online store primarily selling books.
Jeff Bezos established the company in Bellevue, Washington, under the name Cadabra, Inc. It was soon renamed Amazon, and the website launched in July 1995. Books were a practical starting category because an online store could offer a much larger catalog than a typical physical shop.
The company expanded beyond books into music, electronics, clothing, household products, and many other categories. Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, became a major cloud-computing business, while Prime connected shopping with digital media and delivery benefits.
Amazon is often remembered as beginning in a garage, but its first corporate operations were conducted from a house in Bellevue before the company moved to Seattle. The river-inspired name was chosen to suggest unusual scale and breadth.