Amazon began as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994.
Bezos incorporated the company in July 1994 after leaving a job in finance. The website opened in 1995, initially selling books because a catalog of millions of titles was well suited to online ordering. The business was first named Cadabra, but Bezos soon changed it to Amazon, partly evoking the size and variety of the Amazon River.
Amazon expanded beyond books into electronics, household goods, digital media, cloud computing, advertising, and logistics. Amazon Web Services became a major technology business serving companies and governments worldwide. A frequent misconception is that Amazon started as a general online marketplace; its original retail focus was books. Its broad product range and rapidly growing cloud division helped turn it into one of the world’s most valuable public companies.