Jeff Bezos established Amazon as an online bookstore in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994.
Bezos initially incorporated the business under the name Cadabra, Inc., but renamed it Amazon after deciding that the original name sounded too much like “cadaver.” The Amazon website opened in July 1995, selling books because a catalog could offer far more titles online than a physical shop could stock.
The company later expanded into music, video, electronics, cloud computing, logistics, advertising, and many other businesses. Amazon Web Services, launched in the mid-2000s, became a major cloud-computing division and helped change how companies purchase computing infrastructure.
Amazon is sometimes described as having been founded in Seattle, because its early headquarters were there. Its legal incorporation and first operations were in the Seattle area, but the company began in Bellevue before moving its headquarters to Seattle in 1998.