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What next for Amazon as it turns 30?
From Prime Video to AWS, the e-empire is stitching together its disparate parts.
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The big question that hangs over the company as it enters its fourth decade is how to deal with its increasing sprawl.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
The Economist
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In the summer of 1994 a job vacancy for software engineers was posted on Usenet, an early precursor to online forums. The company in question planned to “pioneer commerce on the internet”. Applicants needed to be able to design complex systems “in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible”. Resumes could be sent to Mr Jeff Bezos at a Seattle-based start-up named Cadabra.
The name didn’t stick – on phone calls, “Cadabra” was too easily confused with “cadaver” – but the ambition did. Amazon, which turns 30 on July 5, has indeed changed the world of online shopping. In 2024 its websites will sell an estimated US$554 billion (S$751 billion) worth of goods in America, reckons JPMorgan Chase, a bank. That gives it a 42 per cent share of American e-commerce, far beyond the 6 per cent captured by Walmart, its nearest online competitor (and the country’s biggest retailer overall).
