Introduction
There is no need of telling anyone how successful the e-commerce businesses have become in the current day and age. Even you who are reading this article know the amount of usage of e-commerce websites. The days are long gone when people had to go out to get the things they need. Now you can get almost anything delivered to your home. All you have to do is place your order on an e-commerce website and the product will be delivered to your doorstep. All of this has become possible after the high-speed internet became available for most of the people around the world. This helped a lot of industries to grow and thrive. One of these industries is the e-commerce industry. Everyone was quick to grasp the benefits and comfort of ordering products online.
The e-commerce company that has benefitted from all these developments is none other than Amazon. Amazon is now the king of e-commerce services and it has rightfully earned the spot. The rise of high-speed internet not only allowed Amazon to grow but it also helped it to offer its services more efficiently. As of today, Amazon is a household name in almost every country in the world. If you do online shopping then you must have ordered at least one product from Amazon. Such is the reach and popularity of the e-commerce website. The main reason people choose to order from more than other e-commerce solutions is because of the wide range of products it has to offer. From clothes to electronics to furniture Amazon sells everything.
But the e-commerce giant which has been around for more than two decades is not an overnight success. The article is about Amazon the man behind it and his vision.
Who owns Amazon?
The person who owns Amazon is Jeffrey Bezos who is popularly known as Jeff Bezos. He is not only the owner but also the CEO and founder of the e-commerce company. Most people already know this. The name of Jeff Bezos became very popular when he became the richest man in the world when his net worth crossed Bill gates. It was after this feat people came to know that Jeff Bezos was the CEO of Amazon. Jeff Bezos runs the company and holds an 11.1% stake in Amazon. The net worth of the Jeff Bezos stands at an unimaginable $182.5 billion dollars. He made all of this money by selling products through his e-commerce website. Over the years Jeff Bezos ventured into a lot of different businesses but it is his most profitable one to date.
Apart from Jeff Bezos there some other people and companies that hold a major stake in Amazon. Andrew Jassy owns 0.02% of shares in the company. He joined the company in 1997 and founded AWS ( Amazon Web Services). AWS is currently the largest company in the world that sells cloud computing services. Andrew Jassy is also the CEO of AWS. Jeffrey Blackburn who is the senior vice-president of Amazon’s business development owns a 0.01% stake in the company. The institutional brokerage company Advisory Group Inc holds more shares after Jeff Bezos. Advisory Group Inc owns 7.1% of Amazon’s shares. After this, Vanguard Group Inc and BlackRock Inc own the highest shares in Amazon. Both companies own 6.6% and 5.4% of Amazon shares respectively. Interestingly both these companies also hold major shares of Apple and Facebook which is the most popular social networking site.
The birth of Amazon and its legacy
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in July of 1994. He chose Seattle to be the headquarters of the company which is still the headquarters despite the company becoming a global phenomenon. When the company was first started it was meant to be an online store that sold books. In 1998 the company began its international operations and started selling books in Germany and the United Kingdom. A year later Amazon expanded the range of products it sold. It started selling software, games, consumer electronics, toys, video games, and several other products.
In 2002 the company started venturing into other businesses and founded Amazon Web Services. The service used to provide internet traffic patterns, website popularity, and several other services to developers and marketers. After this Amazon started providing its services through several platforms. Today Amazon is not just a company that sells products it has a much bigger portfolio. Let’s take a look at the other products and services offered by Amazon other than its e-commerce services.
Various products and services of Amazon
Amazon prime
This is currently the most popular product of Amazon after its e-commerce services. Amazon prime is a video streaming platform that is similar to Netflix. It has a paid subscription program that allows its users unlimited access to all of the content in its video streaming platform. The best part about this subscription is the additional benefits you get on Amazon’s e-commerce website. Anyone who has a subscription in Amazon prime will be delivered their products in one or two days. It has more than 150 million users across the world.
Amazon Alexa
Popularly known as Alexa this an AI technology that is developed by Amazon to act as a virtual assistant to its users. This product allows users to perform actions through voice interaction. Alexa is capable of playing music, playing videos, setting alarms, providing information regarding news, traffic, weather, and sports.
Amazon Kindle
This product is a revolution in the market. Until the release of this product, people used to read books only through paperback editions. But after Amazon released this product book lovers just fell in love with this product. Kindle is the first ebook reader of its kind. This product has all the features that a book reader would wish for. Using the Kindle one can buy and download books to read then on the go. If you have a kindle you can carry all of your books in this device. Since its initial release Amazon has launched several new versions of Kindle and all of them have been very successful. There have been many e-readers released after Kindle but none of them are as popular and successful as Kindle. The Kindle Store is an e-commerce service of Amazon for ebooks through which you can download ebooks.
The other products and services of Amazon include AmazonFresh, Appstore, Fire TV, Amazon music, Amazon Studios, Amazon wireless, Echo, Amazon Drive, and others.
Conclusion
What started as an online store for selling books now became one of the most valuable companies in the world. Amazon has been very successful in venturing into other businesses while increasing its e-commerce services reach. Today Amazon offers various world-class products and services for people belonging to all kinds of sectors. Whether it is producing films through Amazon prime or by providing software solutions through AWS Amazon has covered it all. Not only that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos also owns Washington Post and Blues origin a company that is meant for space exploration. Only time will tell what are other sectors Amazon going to step its foot into. But one can be sure that whatever it has done till now is quite exceptional. It is no exaggeration in saying that Amazon is the best e-commerce company in the world.
