Amazon is one of the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing companies, founded in 1994.

The following are the major milestones in Amazon's history:

1. 1994: Founded by Jeff Bezos, it initially began operations as an online bookstore.

2. 1995: Amazon launched its first website, Amazon.com, and began selling goods other than books.

3. 1997: Amazon's initial public offering, becoming a listed company on the NASDAQ stock market.

4. 1998: Amazon launched online music and video sales services, and acquired online book seller Bookpages and online music retailer CDnow.

5. 2000: Amazon launched the online auction market Amazon Auctions and launched the e-book reader Kindle.

6. 2002: Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) and entered the cloud computing field.

7. 2005: Amazon launched Prime membership service, providing free fast shipping and other membership privileges.

8. 2007: Amazon released the first generation of Kindle e-reader, which started the e-book reader revolution.

9. 2009: Amazon launched Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), an e-book self-publishing platform, providing authors with the opportunity to self-publish.

10. 2014: Amazon launched Echo smart speaker, equipped with voice assistant Alexa.

11. 2015: Amazon entered the physical bookstore market and opened its first physical bookstore Amazon Books.

12. 2017: Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market and entered the physical retail industry.

13. 2020: Amazon became one of the world's most valuable public companies and provides a wide range of goods and services worldwide.

Amazon’s history is one of innovation and expansion, from its humble beginnings as an online bookstore to a tech giant with multiple business units and global influence.

Although Amazon is now a behemoth, its history began in a small garage.

In 1994, Jeff Bezos, keenly aware of the business opportunities that e-commerce might hold, quit his job on Wall Street and started his own business in his garage. Although there is evidence that Bezos wanted to build “The Everything Shop” at the beginning of his business, where consumers could buy everything they wanted on his website, he chose only the niche market of books as his entry point at the beginning of his business.

In the United States, the total size of the book market is considerable: it is estimated that the size of the US book market in 1994 was about $19 billion, and the average American spent $79 on books each year.

At the same time, such a large market is not dominated by monopolistic giants. Although there were two major bookstore chains in the United States at that time, Barnes & Noble and Borders, their total market share was only 25%, and the rest of the market share was scattered among various independent small bookstores. Therefore, if you choose to enter this market, you will not encounter too many obstacles from the incumbents. Taking this into consideration, Bezos focused Amazon's initial business on books.

From today's perspective, Amazon's sales method when it started was very primitive: it mainly received orders by mail, purchased goods from book wholesalers based on the orders, and then sent the books to readers through the postal system. From the perspective of the value chain, this is no different from traditional bookstores, both of which are pipeline sales. However, because the Internet broke the boundaries of regional markets, Amazon gained greater demand than any traditional bookstore, and these demands successfully supported its initial growth.