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
CHAPTER TWO 12
IT BEGAN WITH BOOKS Bezos started Amazon as a bookstore but he had bigger ambitions With his engineering and computer science background Bezos understood the emerging technology of the internet and its incredible potential In early 1994 Bezos discovered the internet was growing more quickly than most people realized Between January 1993 and January 1994 online activity had increased by approximately 230,000 percent Bezos said I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast 1 Bezos realized the internet was not just going to grow big it was going to explode He started to think about what kind of business would work well online Bezos made a list of 20 possible products he could sell online In the end he decided on books Books don’t have an expiration date like food A book from one store Amazon’s early days laid the foundation for the company’s dramatic growth several years later 13
