Amazon at 20: what has the online giant ever done for retail?

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 ]

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Bangladeshi editor who faced 83 lawsuits says press freedom under threat

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[ The Guardian | 2017-05-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The $100 million wall: Digital media’s scale struggles

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Dying doctor's memoir up for £30,000 prize

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[ BBC News | 2017-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Forecasting The Future And Explaining Silicon Valley's New Religions

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Hillary Clinton considered Tim Cook, Bill Gates for vice president, Wikileaks reveals

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[ PC World | 2016-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Here's what Bill Gates says you should read this summer

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MediaGuardian 100: why 1 billion users put Facebook back on top

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[ Advertising Age | 2015-07-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon at 20: what has the online giant ever done for retail?

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[ The Guardian | 2015-07-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon records UK sales of £5.3bn last year

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[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hawaii billionaire Pierre Omidyar's ranking slips on Forbes list, Larry Ellison still No. 5

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[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2015-03-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Comic David Mitchell rails at Amazons cynical life-crushing business style

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Business Adventures why Bill Gates's favourite book is back at the top of the bestseller lists

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