What next for Amazon as it turns 30?
From Prime Video to AWS, the e-empire is stitching together its disparate parts
![A photorealistic image of a bunch of ballons that spell out "Amazon" with a ballon in the shape of the Amazon logo beneath.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240706_WBD001.jpg)
In the summer of 1994 a job vacancy for software engineers was posted on Usenet, an early precursor to online forums. The company in question planned to “pioneer commerce on the internet”. Eligible applicants needed to be capable of designing complex systems “in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible”. Résumés were to be addressed to Jeff Bezos at a Seattle-based startup named Cadabra.
The name didn’t stick—on phone calls “Cadabra” was too easily confused with “cadaver”—but the ambition did. Amazon, which turns 30 on July 5th, has indeed changed the world of online shopping. This year its websites will sell an estimated $554bn-worth of goods in America, reckons JPMorgan Chase, a bank. That gives it a 42% share of American e-commerce, far beyond the 6% captured by Walmart, its nearest online competitor (and the country’s biggest retailer overall).
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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Growing closer”
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