Amazon.com, Inc., known asAmazon (/ˈæməˌzɒn/), is an American multinationaltechnology company focusing on selling things online,cloud computing, onlineadvertising, digitalstreaming, andartificial intelligence. It is considered to be one of the Big Five American technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Apple, Meta and Microsoft.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. It started selling books online. Now it sells many things online, so it is sometimes called The Everything Store. It has multiple subsidiaries including Amazon Web Services (cloud computing), Zoox (autonomous vehicles), Kuiper Systems (satellite Internet), and Amazon Lab126 (computer hardware R&D). The company owns Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer.
On July 30, 2025, Amazon will pay the New York Times up to $25 million a year for the rights to its journalism content for AI model training, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Times will allow Amazon to use content from its daily journalism, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic for AI-related uses as part of the agreement.[8]
Amazon owns over 40 smaller companies, includingTwitch,Whole Foods Market,Zappos,Shopbop, Diapers.com, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics),Audible,Goodreads, Teachstreet andIMDb.[9] Amazon.com makes money by letting other people sell things and taking a percentage of the price. Amazon also allows companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured products.
