The e-commerce site is 20 years old this week. So what influence has it really had on the retail and internet industries?It was originally billed as “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” and featured over one million titles. Twenty years later it boasts over 270m active accounts and claims to have more than 2m third-party vendors selling millions of products through the marketplace platform. In that time it has been both lauded and vilified, most recently over corporation tax and staff working conditions but Amazon is quite clearly one of the biggest success stories of online commerce. So what has been its lasting impact? Can it maintain this growth or have we seen the best of it?Amazon was born in July 1994, with the online site launching as Amazon.com a year later. In 1995, Bill Gates, founder and CEO at Microsoft, reportedly paid The Rolling Stones $3m (£1.9m) for the rights to use Start Me Up to launch Windows 95. It was also the year eBay launched as AuctionWeb (a bit later in September) and there were, according to IDC, 16m global internet users compared with over three billion today. Related: Has Net-a-Porter found the holy grail of 21st-century fashion? Related: To avoid Blockbuster's fate, your business needs a chief futures officer Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-07-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
Source Code: My Beginnings, out next year, will include ‘some of the tougher parts’ of the entrepreneur’s early lifeBill Gates has announced that he will be telling his “origin story” in a memoir due to be published next year.Source Code: My Beginnings will cover the businessman and... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-06-04 16:02:08 UTC ]
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Encompassing a wide range of genres from historical fiction to fantasy to poetry to investigative journalism to memoir, this exciting abundance of books published in 2023 by emerging and acclaimed Native writers speak to the rich diversity of the Indigenous experience. From meditations on the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-09 11:00:00 UTC ]
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It seems like everyone (ahem) has a summer reading list for you this week—even Bill Gates. As you probably know, Gates loves to read—and he also loves to write about books on his blog, GatesNotes, where today he published a list of his recommendations for the season. But don’t expect any beach... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-06-06 17:00:32 UTC ]
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With modern consoles offering gamers graphics so photorealistic that they blur the line between CGI and reality, it's easy forget just how cartoonishly blocky they were in the 8-bit era. In his new book, Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Arcade Games, legendary game designer and programmer... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-12-25 16:30:11 UTC ]
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Amazon UK services paid £18.3m in corporation tax last year, up around 26% from £14.5m the year before, as sales soared by 64%. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-07 23:53:33 UTC ]
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Imprint’s Green Ideas series begins with 20 short books by writers from Rachel Carson to Greta Thunberg it believes are ‘the classics that made a movement’From Greta Thunberg to James Lovelock, publisher Penguin Classics has come up with a “new canon” of the environmental literature, which it... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-26 07:00:42 UTC ]
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There have never been so many extremely personal ways to communicate with your user base. Social media, email, push notifications—we’ve never had more options, and the ability to personalize based on medium and preferences. But it’s hard to manage all these messaging platforms and then... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2020-07-15 16:27:23 UTC ]
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After months of reading only coronavirus-related research, Gates is back to enjoying a good book and binging a good show every now and then. Yesterday Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates sat down with Fast Company’s editor-in-chief Stephanie Mehta to talk about a range of topics... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-07-01 07:10:17 UTC ]
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The billionaire philanthropist’s regular reading list is informed by the coronavirus crisis, with books about pandemics, how to survive difficult times, and what policies can help us recover Bill Gates, who has spent years warning the world about pandemics and whose foundation is now supporting... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-05-18 13:00:16 UTC ]
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Harmony picks up a nonfiction book on nonmonogamy by a Bustle editor for six figs, Knopf buys a novel by Jim Carrey, and Doubleday takes a title from Bill Gates on climate change in this week's notable book deals. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-10-04 04:00:00 UTC ]
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When the news first broke that the MIT Media Lab had a close relationship with deceased billionaire and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, some saw it as a momentary lapse in judgment, and there was widespread support for Media Lab director Joi Ito. But then New Yorker writer Ronan Farrow... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2019-10-03 10:50:57 UTC ]
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Science fiction often provides a valuable roadmap for thinking about the future. In the case of “Legend of Sumeria,” the future has arrived. Back in 2011, the analyst Peter Sondergaard famously told the business world, “Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2019-05-18 09:24:59 UTC ]
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The tech-mogul-turned philanthropist has just published a review of a dense 2017 book on how “intangible assets”–things like software and data–are changing the economy. Mid-2018 might seem like a strange time for Bill Gates to review a largely academic book that came out in late 2017. But as... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2018-08-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Wondering which books you should bring to the beach this summer? Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist and unrepentant book nerd, has some suggestions for you. Gates recommended five books he's enjoyed on his blog on Monday, including a Booker Prize-winning novel by an American... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-05-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Increasing the number of children and families who enjoy reading is the Holy Grail for BookTrust and the book trade. New research shines a light on why children read (and why others don’t read), and the findings could be transformative, says Diana Gerald. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2018-04-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Five books–from urban poverty to the history of energy–that the philanthropist says you should be reading this winter. Bill Gates just released his 2017 holiday reading list, part of a semi-annual effort to push the public toward five books that might expand how they think or feel. Of course,... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2017-12-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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If you are worried your beach reads might be a little too easy this summer, Gates has some more heady suggestions for you. As one of the world’s top philanthropists, perhaps it makes sense that Bill Gates is treating beach reading like an intellectual cause: Each year, he offers up his list of... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2017-05-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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