Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, began as an online bookstore and later became a market-cap giant.
Bezos incorporated the company in July 1994, and it launched on the web in 1995 under the name Amazon.com. Books were a practical starting category because an online store could offer a much larger catalog than a typical physical shop.
Amazon expanded into music, electronics, household goods, logistics, digital media, and cloud computing. Amazon Web Services, launched in the mid-2000s, became a particularly important business because it provided computing and storage infrastructure to companies around the world.
Amazon’s scale helped it become one of the most valuable publicly traded companies, although its market capitalization has moved substantially over time. The company’s name refers to the Amazon River, chosen to suggest breadth and size rather than a narrow retail specialty.