Amazon is the company founded by Jeff Bezos that began as an online bookstore in 1994.
Bezos incorporated the business in July 1994, and the website opened in 1995. Its original name was Cadabra, but Bezos changed it to Amazon after deciding that the name suggested scale and appeared early in alphabetical listings.
Amazon expanded beyond books into general retail, cloud computing through Amazon Web Services, digital entertainment, devices, and logistics. Its market capitalization has made it one of the world's most valuable public companies, although rankings change with share prices.
A common mix-up is confusing Amazon with AWS. AWS is Amazon's cloud-computing subsidiary and business division, not a separate publicly traded company.