Amazon was founded in 1994 as Cadabra, Inc. before adopting its current name.
Jeff Bezos established the company in Bellevue, Washington, in July 1994. The business initially operated as an online bookstore, and Bezos chose the name Amazon after the Amazon River to suggest exceptional scale. The company began selling books online in 1995.
The earlier name was short-lived. Bezos changed it after a lawyer misheard “Cadabra” as “cadaver,” and the company became Amazon. Its business later expanded into electronics, household goods, digital media, logistics, advertising, and cloud computing through Amazon Web Services.
Amazon’s growth turned a niche online bookstore into one of the world’s largest companies by revenue and market capitalization. It is sometimes confused with Alibaba because both are major e-commerce companies, but they were founded in different countries and developed distinct platforms and business structures.