12.16 Anti-vaccination and non-scientific cancer 'cures'.12.14 Collection of data and surveillance.12.12 Facial recognition technology and law enforcement.12.11 Nashville Operations Center of Excellence.12.10 Seattle head tax and houselessness services.12.9 Conflict of interest with the CIA and DOD.12.6 Comments by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.12.3 Selling counterfeit, unsafe and discarded items.6.5 Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services.It also produces consumer electronics-most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs.Īmazon has been criticized for customer data collection practices, a toxic work culture, tax avoidance, and anti-competitive behavior. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, film and television content through Amazon Studios, and has been the owner of film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer since March 2022. Īmazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible units. It is the second-largest private employer in the United States. In 2021, it surpassed Walmart as the world's largest retailer outside of China, driven in large part by its paid subscription plan, Amazon Prime, which has over 200 million subscribers worldwide.

As of 2021, it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service through AWS, live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share. Īmazon has earned a reputation as a disruptor of well-established industries through technological innovation and mass scale. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer. Its other subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. It has multiple subsidiaries including Amazon Web Services (cloud computing), Zoox ( autonomous vehicles), Kuiper Systems (satellite Internet), and Amazon Lab126 (computer hardware R&D). Initially an online marketplace for books, it has expanded into a multitude of product categories: a strategy that has earned it the moniker The Everything Store. It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.Īmazon was founded by Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. It has been referred to as 'one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world', and is one of the world's most valuable brands. ( / ˈ æ m ə z ɒ n/ AM-ə-zon) is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.

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