Amazon is the parent organization of the e-commerce platform Amazon and trades on Nasdaq under AMZN. The company began as an online bookseller and expanded into a global technology and logistics business.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, and the website began operating in 1995. Books were a practical starting category because an online store could offer far more titles than a typical physical shop. Amazon later added electronics, clothing, groceries, digital media, and marketplace services.
Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, became another major part of the company. AWS rents computing power, storage, databases, and other tools to businesses and governments, making Amazon an important infrastructure provider as well as a retailer.
Amazon's market capitalization reflects investor expectations about all these businesses. It is not the same as the value of goods sold through the website, because much of the marketplace merchandise belongs to third-party sellers rather than Amazon itself.