ASIA
30 June 2026
Amazon – much more than a book seller
Jeff Bezos’ creation of the Amazon giant is one of the preeminent tech and business stories of our time.Amazon’s humble beginnings
Jeff Bezo’s life had precarious beginnings, as is the case of a number of other American tech superstars. His teenage parents divorced when he was still a baby. His mother remarried a Cuban immigrant, who gave him not only the family name of Bezos, but also a strong work ethnic and resilience.After graduating from Princeton with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science, Bezos pursued a career on Wall Street. But he saw greater business opportunities in the newly-booming Internet.
He had the idea of an “Everything Store”, beginning with an online bookstore – this could have access to an unlimited stock of books in contrast to brick-and-mortar bookstores which have limited stocks. So he left Wall Street for Seattle, a town with lots of tech talent, tax advantages, and a major book distributor in nearby Oregon.
Bezos and his wife, McKenzie, set up shop in their garage, with their new website in 1995. It did not take long before they were shipping books around the US, and even overseas, with the philosophy that the “customer is king”. Bezos expanded the product lines beyond books, and created Amazon Marketplace, which allowed third-party sellers to offer products through Amazon’s platform.
From boom to almost-bust
Amazon quickly became a tech company that sold books. By 1997, Amazon launched its Initial Public Offering. But Amazon suffered at the hands of the bursting of the dot-com bubble in early 2000. Bezos and Amazon did however survive thanks to severe cutbacks.After a couple of years of pain, Amazon bounced back – there was no serious competition left in the online retail space following the bankruptcies from the bursting of the dot-com bubble. One of the astonishing things about Amazon is that it did not make a profit for many years. Thanks to Bezos’ power of persuasion about his long term vision, investors stuck by his side. Another astonishing thing is that Amazon does not pay dividends to its shareholders. The company has never declared a cash dividend and instead prioritizes reinvesting all of its free cash flow back into the business to fund strategic growth areas.
Leading the cloud
Bezos also had other ideas, notably in the area of tech infrastructure. Amazon made great efforts to build infrastructure for its own business. So why not build on this by creating a platform that gives other Internet users instant access to computing power, storage and databases – this means data centres or cloud computing. Thus Amazon Web Services (AWS) was born.In March 2006, Amazon quietly launched Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), cheap on-demand cloud storage. A few months later, it launched Amazon EC3 (Electric Computer Cloud) – renting computer power by the hour. The next generation of companies – Airbnb, Netflix, Uber and others – could use AWS instead of building their own infrastructure. Amazon thus became the backbone of the Internet.
AWS has an impressive array of clients. In October 2013, AWS was awarded a $600M contract with the CIA. By 2019, it was reported that more than 80 percent of Germany's listed DAX companies used AWS. In August 2019, the U.S. Navy said it moved 72,000 users from six commands to an AWS cloud system as a first step toward pushing all of its data and analytics onto the cloud.
Later in 2021, DISH Network announced it would develop and launch its 5G network on AWS. It was also reported that spy agencies and government departments in the UK, such as GCHQ, MI5, MI6, and the Ministry of Defence, contracted AWS to host their classified materials. In 2022, Amazon shared a $9 billion contract from the United States Department of Defense for cloud computing with Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. AWS won a $581 million contract from the U.S. Air Force in January 2026 to provide cloud services and specific Amazon data centers as part of the Cloud One Program, the Air Force's enterprise cloud environment.
AWS generates only a fraction of Amazon's total sales, but it is the primary engine of the company's profitability. AWS thus provides the financial cushioning that allows Amazon to expand its lower-margin e-commerce retail networks and invest heavily in capital projects.
Other Amazon creations
At the same time, Amazon continued its inventions and innovations. Amazon Prime (founded in 2005) is a paid subscription service and loyalty program of Amazon. Kindle (2007) revolutionised how people read books, now through e-books. Amazon Echo (2014) brought AI voice assistants into millions of homes. Alexa (2014-15) built a powerful new ecosystem of smart home devices. Amazon Go (2016) introduced cashierless, checkout-free stores.Amazon’s controversies
After its roaring success, Amazon finds itself amidst many controversies and complex situations.It is a major beneficiary of government business. At the same time, many government agencies are dependent on Amazon’s services. Government is also responsible for regulating Amazon – there are many claims that it is simply too big and powerful – but American politics is a great beneficiary of largesse from companies like Amazon. This is a giant riddle!
There are also claims that by virtue of its size, Amazon can crush startups and stifle innovation. It is however difficult to maintain this argument in the face of the extraordinary innovation that created Amazon and all its services.
Further, there are many criticisms of the alleged poor working conditions in Amazon’s fulfillment centres – Amazon does not allow trade unions. And yet it pays its staff well above minimum wages and has brought many jobs to previous rustbelt towns and regions. It employs approximately 49,000 corporate and tech workers in its Seattle headquarters. Nationwide in America, Amazon alone has added more than 500,000 jobs just since 2020, making it the country's second-largest private employer, just behind Walmart.
Amazon has suffered from “Techlash”, a strong, widespread negative reaction to the growing power, influence, and business practices of major technology companies. Amazon originally selected Long Island City, Queens, as one of its two second headquarters (HQ2) locations in 2018, promising 25,000 jobs. However, in February 2019, the company abruptly canceled the New York project entirely following intense pushback from local politicians, progressive activists, and labor unions regarding massive tax incentives and potential gentrification.
In China and India
Amazon has quite different experiences in China and India. It entered China in 2004 but lost the e-commerce war to deeply entrenched local platforms like Alibaba and JD.com, which outpaced Amazon in understanding local consumer behavior, leveraging low-cost labor, and executing ultra-fast logistics. India represents one of Amazon's most aggressive international plays, where it has committed a cumulative investment expected to reach nearly $88 billion by 2030. The company competes fiercely with Walmart-backed Flipkart and local players like Reliance's JioMart.Not everything was crowned with success
Not all of Bezos’ initiatives have been crowned with success. Amazon's sole smartphone is the Fire Phone, launched in 2014 and was a flop, and discontinued shortly after. It was built to lock users into the Amazon ecosystem.Bezos’s purchase of the Washington Post Newspaper was always controversial. Today, it is facing major financial and editorial restructuring, highlighted by massive losses exceeding $100 million and layoffs cutting over a third of its newsroom staff. The organization is undergoing a dramatic operational reset that has eliminated entire desks and stirred significant internal and public controversy.
Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000, and he flew into space on Blue Origin NS-16 in 2021. But Elon Musk’s SpaceX is widely considered the industry leader over Blue Origin due to its massive operational lead, launch frequency, and capital efficiency. While Blue Origin takes a highly cautious, deliberate approach, SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industry with aggressive, rapid development and an established self-funding business model.
Bezos is a tech leader
Amazon is the world's fifth largest company by Market Cap, after Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft. According to Forbes, Amazon would be the world’s fifth most innovative company after ServiceNow, Workday, Salesforce.com, and Tesla. Also according to Forbes magazine, Jeff Bezos would be the fourth richest person in the world, behind Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, with a net worth of $224 billion (from 2017 to January 2021 he was the richest person in the world).Jeff Bezos officially stepped down as the CEO of Amazon on July 5, 2021. He transitioned into the role of Executive Chairman and was succeeded as CEO by Andy Jassy, who previously led Amazon Web Services. Bezos shifted his primary focus to other ventures, including his space exploration company Blue Origin and philanthropic initiatives.