Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos after he relocated from New York City to Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle, to operate an online bookstore. Bezos chose the Seattle area for its abundance of technical talent from Microsoft and the University of Washington, as well as its smaller population for sales tax purposes and the proximity to a major book distribution warehouse in Roseburg, Oregon. Bezos also considered several other options, including Portland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado.[23] The company, originally named Cadabra, was founded in the converted garage of Bezos's house for symbolic reasons and was renamed to Amazon in November 1994.[24] The Amazon website launched for public sales on July 16, 1995, and initially sourced its books directly from wholesalers and publishers.[23][25]

Amazon went public in May 1997. It began selling music and videos in 1998, and began international operations by acquiring online sellers of books in the United Kingdom and Germany. In the subsequent year, it initiated the sale of a diverse range of products, including music, video games, consumer electronics, home improvement items, software, games, and toys.[26][27]

In 2002, it launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which initially focused on providing APIs for web developers to build web applications on top of Amazon's ecommerce platform.[28][29] In 2004, AWS was expanded to provide website popularity statistics and web crawler data from the Alexa Web Information Service.[30] AWS later shifted toward providing enterprise services with Simple Storage Service (S3) in 2006,[31] and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in 2008,[32] allowing companies to rent data storage and computing power from Amazon. In 2006, Amazon also launched the Fulfillment by Amazon program, which allowed individuals and small companies (called "third-party sellers") to sell products through Amazon's warehouses and fulfillment infrastructure.[33]

Amazon purchased the Whole Foods Market supermarket chain in 2017.[34] It is the leading e-retailer in the United States with approximately US$178 billion net sales in 2017. It has over 300 million active customer accounts globally.[35]

Amazon saw large growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring more than 100,000 staff in the United States and Canada.[36] Some Amazon workers in the U.S., France, and Italy protested the company's decision to "run normal shifts" due to COVID-19's ease of spread in warehouses.[37][38] In Spain, the company faced legal complaints over its policies,[39] while a group of US Senators wrote an open letter to Bezos expressing concerns about workplace safety.[40]

On February 2, 2021, Bezos announced that he would step down as CEO to become executive chair of Amazon's board. The transition officially took place on July 5, 2021, with former CEO of AWS Andy Jassy replacing him as CEO.[41][42] In January 2023, Amazon cut over 18,000 jobs, primarily in consumer retail and its human resources division in an attempt to cut costs.[43]

On November 8, 2023, a plan was adopted for Jeff Bezos to sell approximately 50 million shares of the company over the next year (the deadline for the entire sales plan is January 31, 2025). The first step was the sale of 12 million shares for about $2 billion.[44]

On February 26, 2024, Amazon became a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.[45]