Mission statement

"Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online."

Company history

Amazon.com is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995. It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs and MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and so on. Amazon.com has established seperate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and China. It also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products.

Brand history

Amazon.com was named after the world's largest river by volume, symbolic of the company's aim to have the largest compendium of books available for sale.

The original logo even included an image of a river and the strapline "Earth's biggest bookstore". 

This strapline was removed as Amazon.com began selling more than just books and the logo was simplified.