48 Fun Facts About Amazon (Company)

Which novelist and future philanthropist helped start Amazon in 1994 with her then husband, Jeff Bezos?

MacKenzie Scott. She worked on the business plan with Bezos on the drive west, then kept the accounts and handled shipping from the garage; their 2019 divorce left her 4 percent of Amazon.

The arrow in Amazon's logo runs from A to Z; what else does it draw?

A smile. The redesign flipped the old logo's downward-curving underline into a curve that starts under the a and ends in a dimple under the z, to show a satisfied customer.

Under what name was Amazon originally incorporated in July 1994?

Cadabra. The magic-word name lasted only months: Bezos's lawyer warned him that, over the phone, people heard it as 'cadaver'.

Which industry did Jeff Bezos leave to start Amazon?

Finance. At the hedge fund D. E. Shaw his job had been to think up new business ideas, and when he saw how quickly the internet was growing he quit to build one himself.

Who replaced Jeff Bezos as Amazon's CEO in July 2021?

Andy Jassy. The head of Amazon's cloud business took over on 5 July 2021, 27 years to the day after Bezos founded the company, and Bezos moved up to executive chairman.

Which gaming service did Amazon agree to buy in 2014 for about $970 million?

Twitch. It had begun as the gaming corner of an older site, Justin.tv, and split off in 2011; by the time of the deal tens of millions of people a month were watching others play.

On which stock exchange did Amazon list its shares in May 1997?

NASDAQ. Amazon floated in May 1997 at $18 a share while still losing money every quarter, asking investors to bet on growth long before there was any profit to share.

Besides recalling the Library of Alexandria, why was 'Alexa' chosen as Amazon's wake word?

Its distinctive 'x' sound. The uncommon consonant lets the software pick the word out precisely and makes it less likely that ordinary talk will wake the device by accident.

Whole Foods Market is headquartered in which city?

Austin, Texas. Four local shopkeepers merged their two small natural-food stores there in 1980, betting that health food was ready for a full-size supermarket.

Amazon's rule says a team should be small enough to be fed by what?

Two pizzas. Bezos brought in the rule in 2002 to split the company into teams of fewer than ten that could work on their own, arguing that constant communication was a sign of dysfunction.

Which audiobook company did Amazon buy in March 2008?

Audible. Founder Donald Katz had been selling downloadable audiobooks, and a pocket player to hear them on, since 1997; Amazon paid about $300 million for that head start.

Which Amazon device first carried the voice assistant Alexa in 2014?

Echo speaker. Alexa began in that one device, sold at first by invitation only; by January 2019 Amazon said more than 100 million Alexa devices had been sold.

Which video-doorbell maker did Amazon buy in 2018?

Ring. Five years earlier its founder Jamie Siminoff had pitched the doorbell, then called DoorBot, on the TV show Shark Tank and walked away without a deal.

Amazon was founded in a garage in which Washington city?

Bellevue. Bezos chose the Seattle area for its pool of technical talent, rented a house in the suburb and set up the company in its garage.

What was Jeff Bezos naming his company after when he chose 'Amazon' in 1994?

The South American river. Bezos wanted his store to be the biggest in the world, as the river is, and a name starting with A would also come near the top of alphabetical lists.

Which bookseller sued Amazon in 1997 over its "world's largest bookstore" claim?

Barnes & Noble. In Amazon's garage days Bezos had held his business meetings in one of the chain's shops; the suit was settled out of court and Amazon kept the slogan.

Which motto did Jeff Bezos give Amazon in its early years?

Get Big Fast. Bezos ploughed the money from sales back into growth instead of banking a profit, which is why Amazon went on losing money for years after it went public.

Amazon Prime launched in 2005 as a flat yearly fee for unlimited what?

Two-day shipping. The first members paid $79 a year for it across the mainland United States; the films, music and other extras in today's bundle were added later.

In 2009 Amazon remotely deleted copies of which classic novel from the Kindles of customers who had bought it?

Nineteen Eighty-Four. The seller turned out to have no rights to Orwell's books, so Amazon erased them and refunded buyers, a move Kindle owners were quick to compare with Big Brother.

Which warehouse-robot maker did Amazon buy in 2012 and later rename Amazon Robotics?

Kiva Systems. Its robots turned the warehouse around: instead of workers walking the aisles to find each item, the machines carry the goods to the people who pick and pack them.

Amazon's HQ2 ended up solely in which location after New York was dropped?

Arlington, Virginia. Amazon had split its second headquarters between two winners, then dropped the New York half three months later, saying state and local politicians there opposed it.

On which TV programme did Bezos reveal drone-delivery plans in 2013?

60 Minutes. Once the interview was over, Bezos led the correspondent into a back room where the 'octocopter' drones sat on a table; not even the show's producers had been told what the surprise was.

What did Bezos call the thought experiment that convinced him to start Amazon?

Regret minimization framework. Bezos pictured himself at 80 and decided he would never regret giving up a safe job, but would always regret having missed the start of the internet.

Which book-cataloguing website did Amazon buy in March 2013?

Goodreads. Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri had built it six years earlier so that readers could see what their friends were reading and pass on recommendations of their own.

Which robotaxi start-up, building a driverless vehicle with no steering wheel, did Amazon buy in 2020?

Zoox. Rather than convert an ordinary car, it designs its ride-hailing vehicle from the ground up, which is why the cabin has no driver's seat, steering wheel or pedals.

Project Kuiper, Amazon's satellite-internet network, was renamed what in 2025?

Amazon Leo. The new name is an abbreviation engineers already used: LEO stands for low Earth orbit, which is where the network's satellites fly.

What is the name of Amazon's first household robot, announced in 2021?

Astro. The robot rolls around the house on its own and has a periscope camera that rises for a better look, so an owner who is out can send it to check on a pet or a stove left on.

In 2013 Amazon teamed up with which carrier to start Sunday deliveries?

US Postal Service. Its carriers otherwise deliver Monday to Saturday, so Amazon's parcels became almost the only post to arrive on a Sunday, first around Los Angeles and New York.

Which co-founder sold Whole Foods to Amazon in 2017?

John Mackey. He had started out running a small natural-food shop called Safer Way before the first Whole Foods opened, and he stayed on as chief executive under Amazon until he retired in 2022.

Which Hollywood studio did Amazon buy for $8.45 billion in 2022?

MGM. The deal handed Prime Video a library of about 4,000 films and 17,000 television shows, and with it a stake in the James Bond series.

The first book ever ordered from Amazon, in 1995, was a scholarly work on which subject?

Artificial intelligence. The book was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, on teaching computers to think; the store whose first sale it was now builds such systems itself.

What fills the three glass domes, known as the Spheres, at Amazon's Seattle headquarters?

Cloud-forest plants. More than 1,000 species grow inside, and the domes are a workplace rather than a museum: Amazon built them so that staff could meet and think among the greenery.

Jassy served as Bezos's first technical adviser, a role nicknamed what?

The job meant accompanying Bezos to meetings and debating opportunities with him.

What kind of screen did the first Kindle use?

Electronic paper. The E Ink screen reflects light as a printed page does instead of shining a backlight, so the first Kindle could be read even in bright sunlight.

Ivona, the text-to-speech system behind Alexa, was invented in which country?

Poland. Five friends in Gdansk built the Ivona voice in their early twenties while struggling to make ends meet, and Amazon bought their company to give Alexa its speech.

What is the name of Amazon's service, launched in 2023, that rents out generative-AI models to businesses?

Bedrock. Rather than push a single chatbot of its own, Amazon uses it to offer a menu of AI models from several different companies through one service.

Prime Video debuted in the US in 2006 under what name?

Amazon Unbox. It opened in 2006 as a shop for downloading films and TV episodes to a computer, and only later became the streaming service bundled with a Prime subscription.

Amazon opened its largest campus in the world in 2019 in which city?

Hyderabad. Amazon put up its largest single office building anywhere in the Indian city's Financial District, rather than at home in Seattle.

What did Amazon Go, the convenience store opened in Seattle in 2018, do without?

Checkouts. Shoppers took what they wanted off the shelves and simply left, with no cashier or self-scan till in between; Amazon called it Just Walk Out.

Apple put its European base in Ireland; in which small country did Amazon put its European headquarters?

Luxembourg. In 2017 the European Commission ordered Amazon to pay 250 million euros in back taxes there, calling its tax deal illegal state aid, but EU judges annulled the order in 2021.

The New York half of Amazon's second headquarters, cancelled in 2019, was planned for which Queens neighbourhood?

Long Island City. Amazon walked away three months after choosing it, saying that state and local politicians had made clear they opposed the company's presence and would not work with it.

Which film website has been owned by Amazon since 1998?

IMDb. It grew out of one British film fan's personal list and the contributions of fellow enthusiasts, and Amazon bought it to help it move into online video sales.

Which grocery delivery service did Amazon start in 2007, ten years before it bought Whole Foods?

Amazon Fresh. It delivered fresh and packaged food to the door, and even after the supermarket takeover Amazon kept it going as a separate, cheaper brand.

In 2000 Amazon opened its website to which group, who by 2023 accounted for about 60 percent of its sales?

Independent sellers. Letting other retailers list their goods beside its own turned the store into a marketplace, with Amazon taking a fee on each sale instead of owning the stock.

What disaster wrecked the first Whole Foods Market in 1981, less than a year after it opened and with no insurance?

A flood. The water ruined the stock and most of the equipment, but customers and neighbours turned up to help the staff clean and repair the store, and it reopened 28 days later.

Who invested in Amazon in 1995 after Bezos warned them how risky it was?

His parents. Bezos warned them they would probably lose the money, saying he still wanted to be able to come home for Thanksgiving without anyone being angry with him.

Which toy chain sued Amazon in 2004 for breaking their exclusive toy deal?

Toys "R" Us. The ten-year deal dated from 2000; a court ruled in 2006 that Amazon had breached it, and Amazon later paid $51 million to end the dispute.

Which secretive Amazon subsidiary in Silicon Valley designed the Kindle?

Lab126. The name is a code for the arrow in Amazon's logo: A is the 1st letter of the alphabet and Z the 26th.