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Amazon was founded in 1995,[6]spurred by what Bezos called "regret minimization framework", his effort to fend off regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush.[7]
The company began as an onlinebookstore.[8]While the largestbrick-and-mortarbookstores andmail-order catalogsmight offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could sell far more. Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with "A" so that it would appear early in alphabetic order.[5]He began looking through the dictionary and settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" and it was the river he considered the biggest in the world, as he hoped his company would be.[5]Since 2000, Amazon's logotype is an arrow leading from A to Z, representing customer satisfaction (as it forms a smile). A goal was to have every product in the alphabet.[9]
Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state ofWashington. In July 1995, the company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com —Douglas Hofstadter'sFluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.[10]In 1996, it was reincorporated inDelaware. Amazon issued itsinitial public offeringofstockon May 15, 1997, trading under theNASDAQstock exchange symbolAMZN, at a price ofUS$18.00 per share ($1.50 after threestock splitsin the late 1990s).
Amazon's initialbusiness planwas unusual. The company did not expect a profit for four to five years. Its "slow" growth provoked stockholder complaints that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When thedot-com bubbleburst, and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered, and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million or 1¢ per share, on revenues of more than $1 billion. The profit, although it was modest, served to demonstrate that the business model could be profitable. In 1999,Timemagazine named Bezos thePerson of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizingonline shopping.
Barnes and Noblefiled a lawsuit on 12 May 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the world's largest bookstore" was false. Barnes and Noble asserted, "[It] isn't a bookstore at all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court. Amazon continued to call itself "the world's largest bookstore."[11]Walmartsubsequently filed suit on 16 October 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and reassignment of the former Walmart executives.[11]
eBay is the world's online marketplace; a place for buyers and sellers to come together and buy or sell almost anything!
Here's how eBay works:
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A seller lists an item on eBay, from antiques to cars, books to sporting goods. The seller chooses to accept only bids for the item (an auction-type listing) or to offer the Buy It Now option, which allows buyers to purchase the item straight away at a fixed price.
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In an online auction, the bidding opens at a price the seller specifies and remains on eBay for a certain number of days. Buyers then place bids on the item. When the listing ends, the buyer with the highest bid wins.
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In a Buy It Now listing, the first buyer willing to pay the seller's price gets the item.
Buying and selling on eBay is easy and it's fun. Best of all, you'll never know what you can find.
The following Learning Centre tours will show you the basics of buying and selling on eBay and will help you get going.
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