Amazon Company

Amazon.com, Inc. is a company that offers services for online retail buying. The company is divided into three business segments: International, North American, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The retail sales of consumer goods and subscriptions through websites with a North American concentration, such www.amazon.com and www.amazon.ca, are included in the North America category. Via websites with a worldwide focus, the worldwide sector provides retail sales of consumer goods and subscription services. The global sales of computing, storage, databases, and AWS service offerings for start-ups, businesses, governments, and educational institutions are the responsibilities of the Amazon Web Services section. Jeffrey P. Bezos launched the business in July 1994, and its main office is in Seattle, Washington.

Amazon Company Details

History of Amazon Company

Jeff Bezos launched Amazon on July 5, 1994. Selected by Microsoft to be based in the Seattle area, he took advantage of the region’s technical talent pool. May 1997 saw the public debut of Amazon. When it acquired online book dealers in Germany and the UK in 1998, it expanded its business internationally and started offering music and videos. It began selling a wide variety of goods the next year, such as video games, toys, software, music, consumer electronics, and home décor items.

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) was first introduced in 2002, its primary goal was to give web developers the APIs they needed to create online applications based on Amazon’s e-commerce ecosystem. Statistics on website popularity and web crawler data were added to AWS in 2004.

Amazon Company Products and services

Amazon.com is an online store that offers a wide range of products, including electronic media (software, movies, books, and other media), clothing, baby gear, consumer electronics, cosmetics, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal care items, industrial and scientific supplies, kitchenware, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden items, sporting goods, tools, toys, and games, as well as farm supplies and consulting services. Although some allow international shipping, Amazon websites are country-specific (for instance, amazon.com for the US and amazon.co.uk for the UK). In 2008, there were 615 million monthly visits to amazon.com; by 2022, that number had risen to over 2 billion. The online store is currently ranked as the fourteenth most popular website globally.

Operations

Amazon uses many different transportation services to deliver packages. Amazon-branded services include:

• Amazon Air, a cargo airline for bulk transport, with last-mile delivery handled either by Amazon Flex, Amazon Logistics, or the US Postal Service.
• Amazon delivery station in La Crosse by the La Crosse airport
• Amazon Robotics fulfillment center robots moving picking shelves
• Amazon Flex, a smartphone app that enables individuals to act as independent contractors, delivering packages to customers from personal vehicles without uniforms. Deliveries include one or two hours Prime Now, same or next day Amazon Fresh groceries, and standard Amazon.com orders, in addition to orders from local stores that contract with Amazon.
• Amazon Logistics, in which Amazon contracts with small businesses (which it calls “Delivery Service Partners”) to perform deliveries to customers. Each business has a fleet of approximately 20–40 Amazon-branded vans, and employees of the contractors wear Amazon uniforms. As of December 2020, it operates in the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
• Amazon Prime Air is an experimental drone delivery service that delivers packages via drones to Amazon Prime subscribers in select cities.

Amazon directly employs people to work at its warehouses, bulk distribution centers, staffed “Amazon Hub Locker+” locations, and delivery stations where drivers pick up packages. As of December 2020, it is not hiring delivery drivers as employees.

Corporate affairs

As of June 2022, Amazon’s board of directors were:

• Jeff Bezos, executive chairman, Amazon.com, Inc.
• Andy Jassy, president and CEO, Amazon.com, Inc.
• Keith B. Alexander, CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, former NSA director
• Edith W. Cooper, co-founder of Medley and former EVP of Goldman Sachs
• Jamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
• Daniel P. Huttenlocher, dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Judy McGrath, former CEO, MTV Networks
• Indra Nooyi, former CEO, PepsiCo
• Jon Rubinstein, former chairman and CEO, Palm, Inc.
• Patty Stonesifer, president and CEO, Martha’s Table
• Wendell P. Weeks, chairman, president and CEO, Corning Inc.

Criticism

Amazon’s actions have drawn criticism. These actions include providing law enforcement with tools for facial recognition surveillance, partnering with the CIA in cloud computing, driving customers away from bookshops, negatively affecting the environment, giving workers’ working conditions in warehouses low priority, actively opposing unionization efforts, remotely deleting content that Amazon Kindle users have purchased, accepting public subsidies, attempting to patent its 1-Click technology, engaging in price discrimination and anti-competitive behavior, and reclassifying LGBT books as adult content. A number of judgments over whether to publish or restrict content, including those involving the WikiLeaks website, libelous works, anti-LGBT merchandising, and materials supporting pedophile or dogfighting, have also drawn criticism.

Time released an article highlighting the increasing power that firms like Amazon have over the internet following the social media website Parler’s termination of service by Amazon Web Services. Small companies retaliated against Amazon in December 2011 when the company ran a one-day promotion to launch its new Price Check app. Customers who used the app to compare pricing at physical stores were given a 5% discount when they bought the identical item on Amazon. In response to Amazon’s campaign, businesses such as Groupon, eBay, and Taap are providing discounts of up to $10 on their merchandise.

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