Gizmodo is 20 year erstwhile ! To observe the anniversary , we’re look backat some of the most significant way our lives have been thrown for a loop by our digital tools .
If you ’ve ever render to research how the Big Bad Tech Monopolies of our prison term got so swelled and bad , you ’ll find that these stories are typically moderately straightforward . Google , for illustration , start as a hunting engine caller in the mid-90 ’s , and spent decadesbuying and bullyingcompetitors until it swallowedjust about allof the lookup engine market . Facebook started as a social web , and thencopiedorbought outthe contention until it became the most popular societal networkon the planet . But Amazon … well , Amazon ’s a bit different .
When a young ( andless bald ) Jeff Bezos opened the platform to the world in 1995 , hepromotedit as “ Earth ’s Biggest Bookstore ” ; it was an due east - choice to the Barnes & Nobles and Waldenbooks people hump and have a go at it . In 2022 , it go on from bookstore to “ everything computer memory , ” but even that does n’t in full describe the scope of what Amazon is .
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The same company also controlsa thirdof the universe ’s cloud compute tech while also being amarket leaderin habitation security measure systems . Itdevelops vaccinesanddronesand is equally cozy withlaw enforcementandluxury clothing brands , and own the leading platforms forgamers , moving picture caramel , anddeeply dehumanizingon - requirement labor . In 2019 , the companionship ’s sprawl worldwide warehouse comportment took upmore than 38 Pentagon - Charles Frederick Worth of physical space . Over the preceding two year , that footprint’snearly doubled .
In other Bible , this company is braggy — arguablytoo big — in a way that makes save check on all of Amazon ’s brand and businesses a near - inconceivable ask . So we did it for you .
Using public records , we ’ve done our best to catalog the brands , businesses and subsidiary company that Amazon ’s bought and built up as part of its relentless quest to take over anything and everything it can .
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A quick disavowal : in orderliness to keep thing from sprawling into something as long as a textbook ( and just as boring ) , we ’re only including the ship’s company ’s many , many businesses here in the U.S. This blog wo n’t go into the ship’s company ’s outside step , which — at least fromour inquiry — seems to elongate into at least thirteen other countries . In 2017 , for example , Amazonboughtone of the enceinte e - commerce program in the Middle East beforealso gobblingup one of the region premiere delivery startups soon after . Amazon also owns apayment processorin India , asolar energy stationin Japan , and anocean freight rate operationin China . But just getting your point around Amazon ’s U.S. acquisitions is an consuming exploit . Okay , take a deep hint and countenance ’s dive in .
Amazon’s Book Businesses
It ’s not a coincidence that Bezos pick books as the cornerstone for what would finally become a hulking e - commercialism conglomerate . As he compactly put it inone 1997 interview , there were ( and are ) simply Too Many Koran for any given brick - and - howitzer storage to reasonably carry — but not too many that a newfangled on-line storefront like Amazon could handle . That same class , the ship’s company swash a whopping2.5 million Holy Scripture titlesavailable for purchase on its platform , netting $ 148 million in profits for the soon - to - be public company .
Even at the time , those numbers were downright quaint . But they still dwarfed online sale from rivals like Barnes and Noble , who hear getting a leg up on Amazon in 1998 bypartneringwith Bertelsmann , a major German publishing company , in a multi - million dollar wad that put a raft of European titles up for sale on Barnes and Noble ’s internet site .
Just a week after those two declare their team - up , Amazonannouncedits first - ever acquisition : a trio of internet kip that were bought for a collective $ 55 million in Johnny Cash . One of these companies was the Internet Movie Database ( more on that later ) . The other two — Bookpages and Telebook — were some of the lead online bookstores in the UK and Germany , severally . By the meter Amazon by and by rebranded the two company as Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de , the Barnes and imposing web site was bringing inabout a fourthof Amazon ’s on-line earnings , and Bertelsmann did n’t have a websiteat all .
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Around this clip , Barnes and Noble was alsostriking up partnershipswith digital marketplace sell used books that were rarified , or out - of - print . So naturally , this meant Amazon would end up buying one of the freehanded player in this space . For an estimated $ 200 million in stock , Amazonannouncedin 1999 that it was taking over Exchange.com , an due east - tailer that , itself , possess two platforms specializing in hard - to - detect media : MusicFile specialized in rare records and compact disc ’s , while Bibliofind specialise in rarified record .
In 2008 , Amazon further cement itself in the indie al-Qur’an world by acquiring AbeBooks , another one of these marketplace thatboasted110 million rarified , used , and out - of - print title for sale . In 2011 , AbeBooksbought outits biggest European competitor , ZVAB , bring thousands of booksellers and tens of millions more rarified claim under its ( and Amazon ’s ) wing in the process . passably before long after , Amazonacquiredanother European rarified bookseller , The Book Depository . Next itboughtthe hugely popular online comic stock Comixology which has evidence to be one of its most controversial purchases as more and more outspoken fans havemelted downover change to its app .
Each of these buys pave the way for a future where bribe a Holy Writ onlinetypically meansbuying it from an Amazon property . But that was n’t enough . In 2005 , it acquired BookSurge , a pocket-sized - ish print - on - need supplier catering to little - ish independent publishers . Not long after , Amazon told these same indie outfits that it would n’t trade their merchandise unless BookSurge was the one print them out ; when these publisher revolted , the companystraight up yeetedthe bargain push button from these bookseller ’s Amazon varlet .
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By 2009 , the BookSurge blade would be yeeted , too . Amazon would fold the ship’s company in with another one of its late acquisitions , CreateSpace ( formerlyCustomFlix ) , a self - publishing conglomerate that did n’t only print books , but DVD ’s , VHS tapes and CD ’s as well . Another Amazon subsidiary , Kindle Direct Publishing , initially debuted to handle ego - publishing services for the company ’s titular e - proofreader , beforecompletely taking overCreateSpace ’s persona in 2018 . The disc - on - demand servicing , meanwhile , stop upshutteringthree years afterward .
That same twelvemonth that Amazon created its self - publication monolith , it alsolaunchedits first - ever book imprint , AmazonEncore , which simply redistribute well - rated self - print title that were already available on its site . In 2010 , Amazondebuteda second depression , AmazonCrossing , to deal translate works .
Both of these companies fell under the new createdAmazon Publishingsubsidiary , as did the three imprints Amazon gyrate up in 2011 : Montlake Romance , which ( of course ) focused on romance literature , Thomas & Mercer , which published dead on target offense novellas and whodunit , and47North , for horror- and fantasy - focused literature . It soon had imprint forself - avail books , children ’s books , books for teens , nonfiction , short - fictionand “ book cabaret fiction , ” whatever that might intend . Amazon also has publishing imprint forCatholic readers , queen readers , and readerswho favour comics . Even the obscure imprint Avalon book , with aself - describedfocus on “ wholesome ” Romance language and westerly literature found itself being poached in 2012 .
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It ’s a interracial bag of genres , to say the least . But Amazon is a company that knows what lector need , arguably more than anyone else — at this point , it did n’t just have the intel frombillions of dollarsworth of drop from leger nerd , but italso owned GoodreadsandShelfari , the premiere social networks where those dweeb were advert out and discussing the late course .
Then , of grade , there ’s the audiobooks ; Amazonboughtits first audiobook retail merchant , Brilliance Audio in 2007 beforeacquiringthe audiobook giant Audible less than a twelvemonth later for a hefty $ 300 million . In 2011 , Audible got its own ego - publishing platform , ACX , tacked on . Suddenly , Amazon ’s many , many ( many ) booksellers were n’t only self - publishing their work , but they were narrating the audio editions , too .
Amazon seemed set on systematically gutting region bookstall since its inception , and it ’s a bit ironic that the company tried opening its own strand of brick - and - mortar bookstores under a new subsidiary , Amazon Books , in 2015.It did n’t last .
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Amazon’s Movie Business
If you whizz out a bite , Amazon ’s moves in the mass medium space await pretty similar to the tactics it used to devour the full on-line al-Qur’an market .
Like books , Bezos make love that his company could easily out - stock any physical storefront that had CD ’s or DVD ’s for sale . When the companyannouncedthe launch of its online medicine store in 1998 , a voice bragged that the platform volunteer nearly 100,000 titles while the distinctive retail merchant ( * cough * Barnes and Noble * cough * ) only carry 40,000 , at well . Also like volume , there ’s a galaxy of third parties responsible for producing , packaging , and putting out a give piece of medium — and Amazon wanted to displace as many as it could .
On the movie theatre front , Amazon kicked thing off with its 1998 IMDb attainment . Like the GoodReads buyout it would happen more than a decennium by and by , buying IMDb gave Amazon a front - row seat into the wants / needs / turn - offs of the die - hard lover it was court for its customer base . It also gained accession to the detail IMDb had compile onmillionsof telly shows and movies — which also intend millions of chance to cross - promote and up - sell Amazon ’s growing video armoury IMDB ’s massive customer base .
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A decade later , IMDb would beef up its data even more byacquiringrival motion picture - trivia haven Box Office Mojo in 2008 . Amazon ( through IMDb ) also tried to get a foothold in the film distribution game around this prison term byacquiringWithoutabox , a then - popular portal that indie filmmaker could practice to pass on their piece of work to major moving picture fete and — if that did n’t pan out — share them with the Mass as innocent - to - see content on IMDb.com . ( That program would end up shuttering inlate 2019 ) .
It was pretty obvious that a platform like IMDb — or even a massive movie marketplace — wouldn’t be enough to give Amazon the upper hand against spicy Modern gadget like Microsoft ’s Zune or Apple ’s iPod , which both roll out telecasting - on - need productsaround 2006 . That crepuscle , Amazon debuted its own contender , Amazon Unbox , a platform that let Amazon customer buy installment of , say , Pimp My Ride or Star Trek for about $ 2 a pop .
Ifreviews from that eraare to be believe , Unbox was n’t just unoriginal ; it was a buggy , expensive mess that only worked on your Windows computer ( and even that seemed to be a bite of a toss-up ) . Amazon give it another fling by rebranding Unbox as “ Amazon Video on Demand ” andrereleasing the productin 2008 . Netflix , which had been eating every competitors luncheon before this release , keep open doingmore of the sameafterwards .
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In a move that sounds , from employee’saccountsat the time , like it was acquit out of blind despair , Amazon bundle its video subscription service as a freebee that come with people ’s leverage of an annual quality rank . The newfangled service wasdubbed“Amazon Instant Video , ” when it first rolled out in 2011 , but that would n’t puzzle either . It became “ Amazon Video”in 2015 , then the “ Prime Video ” we make out and lovein 2018 .
Prime Video is , by most accountsjust okayas far as streaming platform go , but Amazon did n’t lease that averageness keep it from rolling out another streaming divine service at the jump of 2019 : IMDb Freedive , which was an ad - keep going , gratuitous - to - flow canal housed under the trivia land site . It soon became “ IMDb television , ” and when that turn out to betoo toughfor viewers to pronounce , it landed on an arguably more ludicrous name—“Amazon Freevee”—instead . That ’s the name we ’ve been stuck with sincethis past April .
As part of Amazon ’s ongoing effort to lure audiences off of Netflix and into an annual Prime subscription , Amazon adjudicate to get into the line of original content . In 2010 , it unveiled a unexampled Hollywood flank dedicated exclusively to that . Amazon Studios was an on-line program that crowdsourced specification playscript fromliterally anyonewho was willing to tilt one in ; the lucky few script that got twist into pilots werethrownto Amazon ’s client base . Based on the evaluation these customer gave , the company would settle which pilots were worthy of becoming a Prime Original Series .
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If you ’ve ever watched a Prime Original , you make love that they’repretty bad . So risky , in fact , that Amazon Studios decided to to the full abandoned the open - script submission processback in 2018 , which was the year the companyreportedlyshifted its Studio ’s focus from indie film to more mainstream blockbuster . The company’s$8.5 billion acquisitionof the movie studio MGM in the beginning this year seems to be another gradation in that direction
Amazon’s Music Business
Aside from the said Musicfile acquisition , Amazon did n’t make too many moves in the audio blank space initially . The company had an on - platform music store , literally called “ Amazon Music Store , ” that debuted in 1998 with a small selection of about 100,000 CD’s — half the sizeof what its competitor were offer .
Next came Amazon ’s foray into MP3 ’s , which arrived in the spring of 2007 , just a few month after the troupe first rolled out Unbox , its first video recording on demand avail . News report from the timenotedthat Amazon MP3 , as it was called , was middling much an Amazon - ified iTunes , albeit selling its songs for just a morsel cheaper . Four years by and by , the fellowship would debut Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player , which permit masses store their tune and access them from any gadget that was n’t an iPhone . Yes , really .
In 2014 , Amazon MP3 and the Cloud Player would bemergedinto a young Cartesian product , Amazon Music . This came pack with the company ’s late scheme to get people to signalise up for Prime : a merchandise called Prime Music , that gave Prime customers barren memory access to “ more than 1 million strain , ” though licensing scuffles meant it was also miss trail frommost major artistsof the time . Two years later , it added another streaming serve , Amazon Music Unlimited , which was unplug from Prime , and , the companypromised , had just as inscrutable a catalogue as something like Spotify . Then in 2018 , it beganrecording and releasingits own original music on the weapons platform , too .
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At the end of the 24-hour interval , Amazon Music still trailspretty far behindSpotify in terms of securities industry part , but it ’s catching up quick enough that the latter company , in revenge , announcedthat it would soon seek taking over the audiobook market .
Amazon’s Payment (and Marketplace) Business
This is one of those rare categories where Amazon ’s had way more misses than hits . This set forth in 1999 , with the company ’s very first attempt to win third - company sellers to its political program : Amazon Auctions , the company ’s answer to eBay , andacquiredfellow eBay competitor LiveBid about two weeks later . This all terminate up being for naught though — the platform’sallegedly mehproduct selection andongoing frustrationsfrom sellers guide to the company more or less junk the whole auction thingtwo yearsafter it launched . It ’s ill-defined if any of the related datum or technical school from the acquisition proved worthful in the long terminus .
A few months after it started its failed foray into vendue , Amazon tradedclose to 900,000 sharesto buy Accept.com , a California inauguration that specify in payment software program for online computer memory . Accept would rapidly flex into Amazon Payments ( later just Amazon Pay ) , which the company debut as part of its second grab at third - company vender , Amazon zShops . For the low price of $ 10 per calendar month ( plus a small share of sales fees ) , merchant could set up themselves up in zShops and hawk their merchandise to thebooming customer basealready buying their books / medicine / movies on Amazon ’s platform .
ZShops becameAmazon Marketplace , a year later , and that platform more or less became the Amazon website we all have intercourse today . As Bezosexplainedto The Wall Street Journal back in 1999 , the idea was to turn Amazon into “ the position where hoi polloi can regain and discover anything they might want to bribe on the Internet . ” He win .
regrettably ( for Bezos ) , Marketplace would be its only existent succeeder in this blank . Amazon tried to get into equal - to - peer payments , first with the acquisition of schoolbook - based based payment hustler TextPayMeback in 2006 , which was then rolled into a product called Amazon Webpay in 2011 . Amazonunceremoniously shutteredthat labor years later . Then there ’s Amazon Lending , which was also launched back in 2011 as a way to finance the small commercial enterprise selling their wares on Amazon . That product ’s still around , butbarely .
In 2013 , Amazonbought outGopago , a California inauguration that create period - of - sale software for retailers , standardized to Square . Amazon debut its own Square competitor , Amazon Register , barely one class after that , and then shuttered the projectjust as promptly . Next Amazon endeavor to target tween shopper withAmazon Allowance , a programme that let parents funnel cash into their small fry ’s Amazon calculate so they could stag on the platform , too . Somehow , this absolutely bonkers concept survived until July 2020 , when Allowanceshut down . woefully Amazon One , the equally bonkers mathematical product that let you use your handprint to compensate in stores , is stillvery much alive .
Amazon ’s most recent attainment in the fintech infinite was the Shopify competitor Selz , which itquietly boughtat the scratch line of 2021 before — you guessed it — shutting it downroughly a yr later .
Amazon’s Fashion Business
Amazon first started arrive for wearable retailer in 2002 with therolloutof the creatively named “ Amazon Apparel & Accessories Store ( later just Amazon Fashion ) , which see brands like Gap , Nordstrom and Target start betray their inventory on Amazon ’s site . Each of these stigma would sign a three year contract bridge with the technical school titan where they ’d pass back a small per centum off any cut-rate sale they made .
Then in early 2006 — mightily around the time that these contracts end — Amazon acquired Shopbop , a democratic on-line hub for habiliment and accessories . While the Shopbop brand has more or less stayed self-governing from Amazon since the acquisition , late reportssuggest that Amazon has been restfully pressuring the hundreds of brand selling on Shopbop to sell directly on Amazon as well . Three years later , Amazon acquired the on-line shoe seller Zappos forclose to $ 1 billion , making it the braggart purchase the company had made up until that point .
While it kept on sell these third - political party brands through its online shopping centre , Amazonintroducedseven of its own private clothing label in 2016 , and begin manufacturing everything from kid ’s boilersuit to men ’s horseshoe . Amazon ’s never disclosed the total number of individual labels it has debut since then , butone recent estimateputs the number at 146 .
It ’s deserving remark that number does n’t even take into account the many , many other private label Amazon ’s introduced in other verticals : it hasat least twofurniture brands ( Rivet , Stone & Beam ) , another label for diaper and baby wipe ( Mama Bear ) , and even a secret line of pet product ( Wag ) .
In 2021,analysts commence sayingAmazon had outpaced Walmart as America ’s high - selling fashion retailer . If that was n’t enough , AmazonopenedAmazon Style , the company ’s first brick - and - trench mortar clothing stores in the first place this year .
Amazon’s Food Business
turn over how the food market biz racks upover $ 740 billionannually , it was only a matter of sentence before Amazon strain to corner that market , too . This initiate in 2003 with therolloutof a short - lived digital gourmet food entrepot ( literally just telephone Amazon Gourmet Food ) . Three years later , the troupe would take its first shot at grocery store delivery when itstarted offeringnon - perishable grocery trade good — think grain and jell - oxygen intermixture — alongside everything else you were already able-bodied to buy on the quickly sprawl east - tailer .
Amazon Fresh — a program that used a fleet of refrigerated hand truck to deliver an even wider array of food to Amazon Prime client — debuted in Amazon ’s Seattle plate turf in 2007 . By 2021 , that divine service would boom toover a dozenmore cities across the state .
Despite its name though , Fresh chop-chop clear a reputation for being , well , less than invigorated : shopperscomplainedthat their deliveries included bruised produce , or solid food that was past its expiration day of the month — if it ended up being deliver at all . Amazon deduced that possibly a brick - and - mortar grocery computer memory would be a better way to go , and in 2016 , that ’s exactly what it gave us with Amazon Go .
First openingin Seattle for Amazon employees , Go was branded as “ a new sort of entrepot with no checkout required . ” alternatively , these computer storage used a combination of sensors lining their grocery shelves and cameras line the ceiling to keep raceway of which items are being picked up and put back . Once those shoppers pick up that week ’s groceries , they ’d just walk out — and the companionship would charge their Amazon explanation for whatever was ask with them . Today , there’stwo dozenGo stores operating across the U.S. This is on top of the37 Amazon Fresh storesthe caller also operate , which are fundamentally identical to those Amazon Go ’s , except they also offer a traditional checkout experience for client that want one .
In 2017 , Amazon pace up its grocery footprint byacquiring Whole Foodsfor just under $ 14 billion . clam for buck , this is still the big buyout Amazon ’s ever made .
Amazon’s Cloud Business
Whole Foods might have been Amazon ’s handsome leverage but the company ’s biggest moneymaker is still Amazon Web Services , its cloud computing division thatfirst debuted in 2002 . Recent figures show AWS earnings as making upabout 52%of the company ’s total income .
What ’s unequaled about AWS ( at least compared to the sleep of Amazon ’s Empire ) is that Amazon did n’t acquire any challenger to first get it off the land . alternatively , from 2006 forward , the company develop a dizzying array of cloud computing intersection in - house . The first of these was Amazon S3 Amazon ’s computer memory selection , which in 2021 held more than100 trillion objectsfrom all the client it had accumulate over the years .
Then came Amazon Simple Queue Service ( SQS ) and Amazon Elastic Compute ( EC2 ) later that twelvemonth . The following years brought a tidal wave of products — so many that there ’s no way we can list them all here . Still , we can give you a sampler : there’sAmazon Cloudfront(a content dispersion internet ) , AmazonSimple DB(a distributed database),Amazon Redshift , which was computer software meant for running data warehouses . There ’s also Amazon Appstream ( a tool for remotely accessing your background apps in the cloud ) , Amazon Aurora ( yet another cloud storage solution ) , Amazon Lambda ( for serverless calculation ) , Amazon Workdocs ( file repositing , but for businesses ) and Amazon Workmail ( cloud - based e-mail , but for business ) . Again , this is all barely engrave the surface .
In 2011 , Amazon started courting federal stake in its cloud products with the launching of Amazon GovCloud , which the companybrandedas a A-one - secure answer for federal factor looking to store their content in the cloud . In 2016 , Amazon deliver the goods a $ 600 million government contract that the company used to developAWS Secret Region , a cloud storage service geared specifically towards the CIA .
Amazon’s Gaming Business
The same way Amazon swooped in to evolve book embossment and movie studios as a way to squawk up its own oblation , the companionship jump get gaming development sign of the zodiac in 2009 with theacquisitionof Reflexive Entertainment , a developer of casual Mac and PC games . In 2014 , it wouldtack onanother gaming studio apartment , Helix Games , which was the same year Amazon also acquired perhaps the biggest social internet for television gamers on the web , Twitch , foran estimated$970 million in hard cash . Pretty before long after that , Twitchsnapped upthe eSports agency GoodGame as a way to romance big brand to overleap their budget on Amazon ’s newest platform .
While Twitch has indeed raked in a average amount of hard currency from its ad deals — about $ 2.6 billionin the last twelvemonth alone — Amazon ’s track phonograph recording for producing game ( much like its track record book for producing movies ) has been … troubled , to say the least . The company first began make biz in - house with the launching of Amazon Game Studios back in 2012 , and hasstruggledto find a smasher since .
This might be why the society ’s former moves in the world of gaming are concentrate less on consumer - facing substance and more on the company ’s happy place : cloud computing . In 2017 , Amazonconfirmedthat it had evolve the cloud development platform Gamesparks , which was fairly quickly shoved under Amazon ’s many ( many ) AWS brands . Thanks to this acquisition , Amazon was n’t only produce games in - planetary house anymore — third - company plot devs were now using Amazon ’s tech for their cloud hosting needs . In 2020 , it work more of these devs on board by roll out Amazon Gamelift , which offered low - price servers for game developer of all frame and size .
Amazonalso acquiredthe 3D body - scanning startup Body Labs for about $ 50 million in 2017 . The tech from this company was apace subsumed by another AWS product , Amazon Sumerian which waspitchedas a agency to let secret plan developer ( or , hell , any developers ) create practical reality experience more well . Amazon also open - source its own 3D biz engine , Amazon Lumberyard , last summer .
And that ’s it . That ’s how Amazon consumed the world . If regulator want to break up the Everything Store , they have a lot of body of work ahead of them .
record more of the latest : Amazon Acquires iRobot for $ 1.7 Billion in immediate payment
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