stream movies produced by Amazon or have DVDs delivered with two-day free shipping via Amazon Prime If a customer is not home the delivery person can use Amazon Key to unlock the door and leave packages inside his or her house A person can order household products instantly using an Amazon Dash Button And through Amazon Services a user can hire a person to clean his or her house INNOVATION AND CHANGE As Amazon’s founder and leader Bezos has pushed the company to innovate and change Amazon now builds tech devices like the Kindle e-reader the Fire tablet and the Echo speaker which features the voice-activated personal assistant Alexa Amazon is experimenting with package delivery by drone Bezos has used his Amazon profits to fund experimental space travel He started the aerospace company Blue Origin in hopes of making space flight more affordable and available to the public Amazon has been innovative in other ways as well In addition to selling products itself the company lets other sellers use its website to advertise and sell products One of the biggest moneymakers for Amazon is Amazon Web Services AWS Amazon’s cloud service created in 2002 8
KEY PLAYERS JEFF BEZOS Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon was born on January 12 1964 in Albuquerque New Mexico Bezos was the son of Jackie Gise and Ted Jorgensen But Bezos’s mother divorced Jorgensen and remarried Her new husband Mike Bezos legally adopted four-year-old Jeff Bezos’s mother was a stay-at-home mom Mike was an engineer for oil company Exxon During his childhood Bezos and his family moved several times living in Houston Texas and Pensacola Florida Bezos often spent summers at his grandparents ranch in Texas where he worked with his grandfather doing chores and helping fix machinery As a kid Bezos was interested in science and inventions He was a tinkerer who built a solar cooker from an umbrella and built a variety of who built a solar cooker from an umbrella and built a variety of alarms and traps to keep his younger siblings out of his room alarms and traps to keep his younger siblings out of his room Intelligent and hardworking Bezos graduated at the top of his class Intelligent and hardworking Bezos graduated at the top of his class from his Florida high school from his Florida high school Bezos studied electrical engineering and Bezos studied electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton University After computer science at Princeton University After Bezos graduated in 1986 he eventually got a Bezos graduated in 1986 he eventually got a job in New York City working for an investment job in New York City working for an investment company called DESCO Bezos excelled and at company called DESCO Bezos excelled and at 26 years old he was the youngest vice president 26 years old he was the youngest vice president DESCO had ever had In early 1994 Bezos’s boss DESCO had ever had In early 1994 Bezos’s boss asked him to research possible internet business asked him to research possible internet business opportunities Bezos discovered that use of the opportunities Bezos discovered that use of the internet was growing quickly He started to think internet was growing quickly He started to think about what kind of business would work well as an about what kind of business would work well as an internet business internet business In July 1994 Bezos and his wife MacKenzie In July 1994 Bezos and his wife MacKenzie left New York City and drove to Seattle where left New York City and drove to Seattle where they started Amazon They had been married they started Amazon They had been married for one year In 2018 Bezos lived near Seattle for one year In 2018 Bezos lived near Seattle with MacKenzie and their four children with MacKenzie and their four children Bezos has been the CEO of Amazon from the very beginning 9
Organizations including Netflix Pinterest and even the US government use AWS to run their websites and streaming services AWS provides more than 40 percent of all cloud computing services available online 4 THE RISE OF THE INTERNET Today Amazon’s phenomenal success is easy to see But when Bezos first started Amazon in July 1994 many people weren’t even sure what the internet was It took almost one year to get the website up and running When Amazon received its first online order on April 3 1995 few people were using the internet and even fewer were using it to shop Many people predicted that Amazon would fail No one not even Bezos could have predicted the company’s stunning success Bezos was smart an outstanding engineer and computer science student who had graduated from Princeton University one of the top universities in the United States He was also a hard worker In fact before Bezos started Amazon he already had a good job as a vice president at an investment company in New York City Bezos decided to leave his good job move across the country to Seattle and start a small online bookstore in his garage He wanted to build 10
his own business from the ground up and he believed the internet was the way to do it Today Amazon is a part of everyday life for millions of people worldwide In the US 40 cents of every dollar spent online is spent on Amazon 5 The company has dramatically shaped not just the book business but even people’s buying habits and online shopping in general And if WHY SEATTLE Bezos knew what he wanted to sell online but he had to decide where to base the new company He chose Seattle for several reasons Seattle was the home of the aerospace company Boeing the software company Microsoft and the University of Washington This meant there were plenty of experts in computer science and technology who could work at Amazon Seattle was also close to a large book distribution company making it easier for Amazon to stock its primary products Bezos has his way Amazon will continue to be a leader in the technology industry for years to come 11
