Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. {{nasdaq|AMZN}} is an American electronic commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet. Amazon also owns Alexa Internet, a9.com, and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Expansion of product lines and site features

Amazon's bookstore quickly began expanding, branching off into retail sales of music CDs, videos and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, and more.

Related Topics:
Music - CD - DVD - Software - Electronics - Garden - Toy - Apparel - Food - Jewelry - Watch - Health - Beauty products - Musical instrument

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According to information in the Amazon.com discussion forums, Amazon derives about 40% of its sales from affiliates, whom they call "Associates." An Associate is essentially an independent seller or business that receives a commission for referring customers to the Amazon.com site. Associates do this by placing links on their websites to the Amazon homepage or to specific products. If a referral results in a sale, the Associate receives a commission from Amazon. By the end of 2003, Amazon had signed up almost one million Associates. Associates can access the Amazon catalogue directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. Amazon was the first online business to set up an Associates program. The idea has since been copied by many other online businesses.

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Amazon bought the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) in April 1998, a move that upset a number of its longtime users; the transformation of IMDb from a public-domain, nonprofit site to a commercial venture was seen as a slap in the face to many Internet users. However, the IMDb has continued to grow and prosper.

Related Topics:
Internet Movie Database - 1998

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Amazon bought Cambridge, Massachusetts-based PlanetAll in August 1998 for 800,000 shares of Amazon stock, then valued at approximately $88 million. PlanetAll operated a Web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. Most of the staff at PlanetAll were absorbed by Amazon in early 1999. Many went on to build community-focused features for the Amazon Web site, including Friends & Favorites and Purchase Circles. The original PlanetAll Web site was discontinued on July 2, 2000.

Related Topics:
Cambridge, Massachusetts - PlanetAll

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In March 1999, Amazon launched Amazon.com Auctions, its foray into the Internet auctions space then dominated by eBay. Although Amazon's stock received a short-term boost from the announcement, Amazon's auction business failed to chip away at eBay's juggernaut growth. Much of the failure is owed to Amazon's inability to quickly integrate the fledgling auctions business into their existing successful retail space where Amazon's customer traffic was focused. Amazon Auctions was followed by the launch of a fixed-price marketplace business called zShops in September 1999, and a failed Sotheby's/Amazon partnership called sothebys.amazon.com in November. Although zShops failed to live up to its expectations, it laid the groundwork for the hugely successful Amazon Marketplace service launched in 2001 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items.

Related Topics:
EBay - ZShops - Sotheby's - Sothebys.amazon.com - Amazon Marketplace

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Amazon bought Alexa Internet, Accept.com, and Exchange.com in a set of deals worth approximately $645 million in June 1999.

Related Topics:
Alexa Internet - Accept.com - Exchange.com

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In 2002, Amazon became the exclusive retailer for the much-hyped Segway Human Transporter. Bezos was an early supporter of the Segway before its details were made public.

Related Topics:
2002 - Segway Human Transporter

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Search Inside the Book is a feature which makes it possible for customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog. The feature started out with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003. There are currently about 250,000 books in the program. Amazon has cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches. To avoid copyright violations, Amazon.com does not return the computer-readable text of the book but rather a picture of the page containing the found excerpt, disables printing of the pages, and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. Amazon is planning to launch Search Inside the Book internationally.

Related Topics:
October 23 - 2003 - Publisher

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In 2004, Amazon launched a new search engine called A9.com. A9.com incorporates Search Inside the Book, allowing users to search within the text of books as well as searching for text on the Web. It also purchased Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce Web site.

Related Topics:
2004 - Search engine - A9.com - Joyo.com

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Also in 2004, Amazon launched its Presidential Candidates feature, whereby customers could donate from $5 to $200 to the campaigns of U.S. presidential hopefuls, resurrecting the Amazon Honor System for the purpose. The Honor System was originally launched in 2001 as a way for Amazon customers to "tip" their "favorite Web sites and to buy digital content on the Web," Amazon collecting 2.9% of the payment plus a flat fee of 30 cents. It has never been shut down, but had fallen into relative disuse.

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At the end of the year, with the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Amazon set up an online donation channel to the American Red Cross using the Honor System, waiving its processing fee. As of January 3, 2005, over 162,000 individuals had donated over $13.1 million in this way. The same week, Amazon created similar channels for the British, Canadian, French, German and Japanese Red Cross organisations via its international sites. Over 7,000 Britons donated over $350,000; over 900 Canadians, over $56,000; over 660 French, over $23,000; over 2,900 Germans, over $145,000; and over 1,900 Japanese, over $66,000.

Related Topics:
Earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean - American Red Cross - January 3 - 2005 - British - Canadian - German - Japanese - Red Cross

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Amazon reactivated its Red Cross donation channel when Hurricane Katrina struck at the end of August, 2005. As of September 8, over 98,000 payments had been made totaling over $10.7 million.

Related Topics:
Hurricane Katrina - September 8

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