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Amazon.com
is an electronic
commerce company based in Seattle,
Washington, USA. It was one of the
first major companies to sell goods
over the Internet and was one of the
iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com
bubble. After the bubble burst Amazon
faced skepticism about its business
model, but it made its first annual
profit in 2003. Amazon also owns Alexa
Internet, A9.com, and the Internet
Movie Database.
Founded as Cadabra.com by Jeff Bezos
in 1994 and launched in 1995, Amazon.com
began as an online bookstore, though
it soon diversified its product lines,
music CDs, adding DVDs, computer software,
video games, electronics, apparel,
furniture, toys, food and more. Amazon
has established separate websites
in Canada, the United Kingdom, France,
Germany, China, and Japan and it ships
globally on selected products. |
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Amazon.com
offers web services for access to its catalog
as well as for integration with retailers like
Target and Marks & Spencer. A9.com provides
search engine services directly on the Amazon.com
site. Since November 2005, the company has been
testing Amazon Mechanical Turk, an application
programming interface (API) allowing programs
to dispatch tasks to human processors.
A brief history of Jeff Bezos: Jeff Bezos was
born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother's
ancestors were early settlers in Texas, and over
the generations had acquired a 25,000 acre (101
km² or 39 miles²) ranch in Cotulla.
Bezos's maternal grandfather was a regional director
of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque.
He retired early to the ranch, where Jeff Bezos
spent most summers of his youth, working with
his grandfather at the enormously varied tasks
essential to the operation. At an early age, he
displayed a striking mechanical aptitude. Even
as a toddler, he asserted himself by dismantling
his crib with a screwdriver.
Jeff Bezos was born when his mother, Jackie Bezos,
was still in her teens, and her marriage to his
father lasted little more than a year. She remarried
when Bezos was five. Bezos's stepfather, Miguel
Bezos, was born in Cuba, he migrated to the United
States alone at age 15 and worked his way through
the University of Albuquerque. When he married
Bezos's mother, the family moved to Houston, Texas,
and Miguel Bezos became an engineer for Exxon.
Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary in Houston
from the 4th to 6th grades.
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