oh internet

Large scale merchant website

Summary

Amazon.com is one of the most profitable websites in the world. It is the largest merchant website on the net, being over three times the size of its next largest competitor.

Amazon notably owns imdb and Alexa, among other websites and services. The website continues to be best known for its books, capitalizing on this with the Kindle.

Origins

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in Seattle in 1994. The company was originally called "Cadabra", but this sounded too much like Cadaver (which is considered to not be a good business name). The name Amazon was later picked as a reference to the large river, and also for its alphabetic advantage. Bezos won Person of the Year in 1999 after Amazon began the online shopping revolution.

Current status

Amazon remains the top merchant site in the world. It has somewhat of a rivalry with eBay, although the two have two completely different business models. eBay focuses on auctions that are by the users. Amazon sells its own materials (as well as allowing other merchants to make listings) and does not use auctions. Amazon is currently receiving more unique visitors than eBay, although this is not always the case.

Like eBay, many trolls abuse the reviews to give good reviews to bad products and vice versa.

Wishlists

Remember those wishlists you wrote to Santa that your parents ignored? Well, Amazon allows users to post their wishlists. This is usually done by people that lack any sense of pride or self-respect, like so-called camwhores and webcomic authors. Fans of these individuals sometimes try to get in their good graces by buying them things off the wishlist. This is completely normal, healthy behavior and should not be questioned.

Facts

Images

Typical use of the Kindle

Related Pages

Alexa

eBay

IMDb

Kindle

Wishlist

External Links

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