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Amazon.com

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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American electronic commerce (e-commerce) company in Seattle, Washington. Amazon was one of the first major companies to sell goods by Internet, and was an iconic "stock in which to invest" of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the collapse, the public became skeptical about Amazon's business model, yet, it still turned an annual profit in 2003.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994, and launched it online in 1995. Amazon.com started as an on-line bookstore, but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs, MP3 format, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, and Japan. It also provides global shipping to certain countries for some of its products.

Product lines
Amazon has steadily branched into retail sales of music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, groceries, and more.
The company launched Amazon.com Auctions, its own Web auctions service, in March 1999. However it failed to chip away at industry pioneer eBay's juggernaut growth. Amazon Auctions was followed by the launch of a fixed-price marketplace business called zShops in September 1999, and a failed Sotheby's/Amazon partnership called sothebys.amazon.com in November.
Amazon no longer mentions either Auctions or zShops on its main pages and the help page for sellers now only mentions the Marketplace.[8] Old links to zShop ([1]) now simply redirect to the Amazon home page, while old links to Auctions ([2]) take users to a transactions history page. New product listings are no longer possible for either service.
Although zShops failed to live up to its expectations, it laid the groundwork for the hugely successful Amazon Marketplace service launched in 2001 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. Today, Amazon Marketplace's main rival is eBay's Half.com service.
Beginning August 2005,[9] Amazon began selling products under its own private label, "Pinzon"; the initial trademark applications suggested the company intended to focus on textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods.[9] In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a larger and more diverse list of goods, and to register a new design consisting of the "word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter O whose space appears at the "one o'clock" position.".[10] The list of products registered for coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry.[10]
On May 16, 2007 Amazon announced its intention to launch its own online music store.[11] The store launched in public beta September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management.[12].
In August 2007, Amazon announced AmazonFresh, a grocery service offering perishable and nonperishable foods. Customers can have orders delivered to their homes at dawn or during a specified daytime window. Delivery was initially restricted to residents of Mercer Island, Washington, and was later expanded to several ZIP codes in Seattle proper.[13] AmazonFresh also operated pick-up locations in the suburbs of Bellevue and Kirkland from summer 2007 through early 2008.
In 2008 Amazon expanded into film production and is currently funding the film The Stolen Child with 20th Century Fox.[14]
[edit] Review and Recommendation Feature
Amazon.com is known for its candid reviews and its capabilities for recommending products to its customers. The customer reviews are monitored for all negative or indecent comments that are directed at anything, or anyone, but the product itself. In regards to the reviews lacking relative restrictions, Robert Spector who is the author of the book Amazon.com, describes how “when publishers and authors asked Bezos why Amazon.com would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that Amazon.com was ‘taking a different approach...we want to make every book available – the good, the bad, and the ugly...to let truth loose’” (Spector 132).