Amazon (Company)
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48 free Amazon (Company) trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Amazon started in July 1994 as Cadabra, Inc., run from Jeff Bezos's rented garage in Bellevue, Washington, and sold its first book a year later. Three decades on it is the world's biggest online retailer, the biggest cloud provider through AWS, and the owner of Whole Foods, MGM, Twitch, Ring and Audible. Its history is full of small, strange details: the lawyer who misheard the name, the one-cent-per-share first profit, the campus named after a dog. These 48 questions cover the founding story, the 1997 IPO and the Barnes & Noble lawsuit, the launch and price history of Prime, the Kindle's codename, where Alexa got its name, the origins of AWS and its 57-person team, Amazon Go and Prime Air, the HQ2 contest and the acquisitions of Whole Foods and MGM. Easy questions stick to products and milestones; the expert tier asks about first hires, drone models and damages awards. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or use it for a tech-themed quiz night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which novelist and future philanthropist helped start Amazon in 1994 with her then husband, Jeff Bezos?
MacKenzie Scott
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.
Q 02The arrow in Amazon's logo runs from A to Z; what else does it draw?
A smile
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.
Q 03Under what name was Amazon originally incorporated in July 1994?
Cadabra
Cadabra. The magic-word name lasted only months: Bezos's lawyer warned him that, over the phone, people heard it as 'cadaver'.
Q 04Which industry did Jeff Bezos leave to start Amazon?
Finance
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.
Q 05Who replaced Jeff Bezos as Amazon's CEO in July 2021?
Andy Jassy
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.
Q 06Which gaming service did Amazon agree to buy in 2014 for about $970 million?
Twitch
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.
Q 07On which stock exchange did Amazon list its shares in May 1997?
NASDAQ
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.
Q 08Besides recalling the Library of Alexandria, why was 'Alexa' chosen as Amazon's wake word?
Its distinctive 'x' sound
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.
Q 09Whole Foods Market is headquartered in which city?
Austin, Texas
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.
Q 10Amazon's rule says a team should be small enough to be fed by what?
Two pizzas
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.
Q 11Which audiobook company did Amazon buy in March 2008?
Audible
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.
Q 12Which Amazon device first carried the voice assistant Alexa in 2014?
Echo speaker
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.
Q 13Which video-doorbell maker did Amazon buy in 2018?
Ring
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.
Q 21Amazon's HQ2 ended up solely in which location after New York was dropped?
Arlington, Virginia
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.
Q 22On which TV programme did Bezos reveal drone-delivery plans in 2013?
60 Minutes
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.
Q 23What did Bezos call the thought experiment that convinced him to start Amazon?
Regret minimization framework
Q 14Amazon was founded in a garage in which Washington city?
Bellevue
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.
Q 15What was Jeff Bezos naming his company after when he chose 'Amazon' in 1994?
The South American river
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.
Q 16Which bookseller sued Amazon in 1997 over its "world's largest bookstore" claim?
Barnes & Noble
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.
Q 17Which motto did Jeff Bezos give Amazon in its early years?
Get Big Fast
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.
Q 18Amazon Prime launched in 2005 as a flat yearly fee for unlimited what?
Two-day shipping
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.
Q 19In 2009 Amazon remotely deleted copies of which classic novel from the Kindles of customers who had bought it?
Nineteen Eighty-Four
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.
Q 20Which warehouse-robot maker did Amazon buy in 2012 and later rename Amazon Robotics?
Kiva Systems
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.
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.
Q 24Which book-cataloguing website did Amazon buy in March 2013?
Goodreads
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.
Q 25Which robotaxi start-up, building a driverless vehicle with no steering wheel, did Amazon buy in 2020?
Zoox
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.
Q 26Project Kuiper, Amazon's satellite-internet network, was renamed what in 2025?
Amazon Leo
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.
Q 27What is the name of Amazon's first household robot, announced in 2021?
Astro
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.
Q 28In 2013 Amazon teamed up with which carrier to start Sunday deliveries?
US Postal Service
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.
Q 29Which co-founder sold Whole Foods to Amazon in 2017?
John Mackey
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.
Q 30Which Hollywood studio did Amazon buy for $8.45 billion in 2022?
MGM
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.