Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and has ranked among the largest companies by market capitalization.
Amazon began as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. It expanded into a broad marketplace selling products from many categories, while also building logistics, digital media, devices, advertising, and cloud computing.
Amazon Web Services became a particularly important business because it provides computing, storage, databases, and other infrastructure to organizations worldwide. Its profits and growth prospects have strongly influenced how investors value the entire company.
Amazon’s market capitalization has moved widely over time because its share price responds to retail growth, cloud demand, operating costs, interest rates, and economic expectations. The company’s rank therefore changes as other mega-cap firms rise or fall.