37. Early 2001, Amazon reported a whopping fiscal loss of $1.4 billion “ Lehman Brothers warned investors that the company might run out of cash and advised them to avoid its stock”
41. Shutting down a Seattle customer-service center “Bezos followed with a memo calling for the company to get the crap out and stop selling products that weren't profitable.”
45. Does not actually take control of the inventory "The more things they can sell to (customers) and not do the dirty work, the better the business grows," said Kate Delhagen, a retail analyst with Forrester Research.
Amazon.com company time line http://www.xtimeline.com/timeline/History-of-amazon-com
- Dec 1999, Time magazine named Bezos "Person of the Year," calling him the "king of cybercommerce." - Jan 2000, company fired 150 workers, mostly employees at its Seattle HQ - Amazon reported a loss of $323 million for the holiday fourth quarter 99-2000 - summer of 2000, Amazon's stock price had dropped by more than two-thirds - "One much publicized report by Lehman Brothers warned investors that the company might run out of cash and advised them to avoid its stock" - Early 2001 -- when Amazon reported a whopping fiscal loss of $1.4 billion
Amazon transformed itself from a specialty retailer into an online shopping portal, taking a cue from auctioneer eBay, which set itself up as a mediator between buyer and seller. It started selling products from companies such as Toys "R" Us and Target on its Web site. It added merchandise from smaller retailers in its zShops. And it competed directly with eBay through its Amazon Auctions. Most recently, Amazon launched product categories with merchandise from other retailers. Its apparel store, for instance, debuted in the fall of 2002 stocked with underwear, sweaters and jeans from companies such as Nordstrom and Gap. Although Amazon lists the merchandise on its Web site, it does not actually take control of the inventory; the individual vendors are responsible for fulfilling their orders. Amazon, however, receives a cut from the sales. Amazon's sales from third-party vendors are still a small percentage of its total revenue, but the margins are higher.
Amazon Kindle is a portable e-book reader. More precisely, it is a software, hardware and network platform developed by Amazon.com that utilizes wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media in some countries. About the different version of kindles http://gdgt.com/amazon/kindle/ Amazon.com got outside the web browser in 2007 and offered its customers a way to purchase books through its very own making: an e-book reader specially designed by the online retailer. Since available in 2007, a new version has been announced and Amazon continues to expand the services and products available to current and future Kindle owners.
* Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. In its Kindle update, Amazon did not offer any comparison between the sales of paperbacks and e-books. * Over the last 30 days, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. * Author James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date. Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books. * Five authors—Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts—have each sold more than 500,000 Kindle books. * The U.S. Kindle store now has more than 630,000 books available, including new releases and 106 of 110 New York Times best sellers. * About 510,000 books available for Kindle are priced at $9.99 or less, including 75 New York Times best sellers. * Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle.
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) are a collection of remote computing services (also called web services) that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the Internet by Amazon.com. The most central and well-known of these services are Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. Amazon Web Services provide online services for other web sites or client-side applications. Most of these services are not exposed directly to end users, but instead offer functionality that other developers can use. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 developers had signed up to use
From jeffs blog http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/05/lots-of-bits.html