25 years of Amazon infographic
Graphic charts historical milestones in the life of pioneering online retailer Amazon.
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BUSINESS

Amazon opened for business 25 years ago

By Ninian Carter

July 16, 2020 - In 1995, after starting life in a garage in Washington state, Amazon began selling books online. Today, its founder Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, with a net worth of almost $117 billion.

Amazon opened for business as an online bookseller in 1995, and founder Jeff Bezos’s credo, "get big fast," has paid phenomenal dividends. Twenty-five years on, antitrust regulators are scrutinising his methods for getting big.

Within a month of the opening, the new retailer had shipped books to all 50 U.S. states. By December 1999, Amazon had shipped 20 million items to 150 countries around the globe.

The Seattle-based Amazon eventually emerged as an e-commerce colossus that sold everything from groceries to furniture and gardening supplies. In 2019, the company surpassed Walmart as the world’s largest retailer. Bezos’ other investments include online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, grocery retailer Whole Foods and the Washington Post.

The rise of the company, which is credited with helping to revolutionise the way people shop, hasn’t gone unnoticed. The European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation in 2019 to assess whether Amazon’s use of sensitive data from independent retailers who sell on its website is in breach of European Union competition rules. Reuters reports that the investigators want to know whether Amazon’s dual role as both a marketplace hosting third-party merchants and as a powerful retailer in its own right on the same platform, often selling the same products, gives it an unfair competitive advantage.

The Justice Department says it's launching a wide-ranging antitrust review of big tech companies, and Amazon is included on its hit list. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin recently asserted that Amazon has "destroyed the retail industry across the United States."

Forbes magazine reports that Amazon took close to half the business in e-commerce in the U.S. in 2018, with sales of over $230 billion – not all in the retail space – and is likely to keep increasing that share. Amazon can expect ongoing antitrust scrutiny all the while its dominant digital position and pricing power are such a tough challenge for competitors.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 10/07/2020; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Associated Press, Creative Commons
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