Amazon first sold a book when Jeff Bezos launched the online retailer in 1995.
Bezos founded Amazon in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994, and the website began operating in July 1995. The first product sold was a copy of Douglas Hofstadter’s book Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies, ordered by a customer in the United States.
The business was originally called Cadabra, but Bezos changed the name to Amazon, evoking the scale of the Amazon River. The company began as an online bookstore before adding music, electronics, household goods, and an enormous third-party marketplace.
Amazon Web Services later became a major business by providing cloud infrastructure to companies and governments. That diversification helped Amazon grow from a retailer into a global technology, logistics, advertising, and cloud-computing company whose market capitalization has ranked among the world’s largest.