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Jeff Bezos and his wife open an online bookstore in Seattle. Bezos finances the company with $10,000 from his own pocket. -
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Amazon goes public at $18 per share, giving it a valuation of $300 million. -
Amazon opens a second distribution center in New Castle, Delaware, in order to serve customers on the East Coast. -
Amazon expands its offerings and starts selling CDs and DVDs. -
Amazon patents the ability to purchase an item online with the click of a mouse. Called 1-Click, the technology gives the company an early advantage by prompting customers to buy more and allowing the company to collect their data. -
Amazon allows third-party sellers to hawk used merchandise in what it called zShops (now known as the Marketplace) -
Amazon announces a partnership with several major clothing companies to offer 400 apparel brands in its online store. -
The company starts to generate extra income by licensing its platform to other e-commerce sites, like Borders.com and Target.com. -
Amazon enters the Chinese market by buying Joyo, the largest online seller of electronics and books in China -
a membership offering free two-day shipping within the contiguous United States on all eligible purchases for a flat annual fee of $79. -
Amazon launches its digital music service. The company also debuts its Kindle e-reader in this year. -
Amazon pays $300 million for Audible, which comes with a library of 80,000 programs in the United States and Europe. -
Amazon buys online shoe retailer Zappos in an all-stock deal worth nearly $900 million. -
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Amazon releases the Fire Phone, entering the smartphone market. -
The store's opening is meant to market Amazon's growing list of electronic devices as much as it is to sell books. -
After struggling for years in the intensely competitive grocery delivery business, Amazon ups the ante and purchases Whole Foods' 471 stores for $13.7 billion. -
Amazon began search for Amazon HQ2, a second company headquarters to house up to 50,000 employees. -
Amazon opens a cashier-less grocery store (Amazon Go) to the public. -
Amazon's stock price rises enough to make the company briefly worth $1 trillion. It's the second company to pass that threshold, after Apple reached it earlier in the year. -
At the quarter-century mark, Amazon has 647,500 employees, occupies 288.4 million square feet of real estate, and accounts for nearly half of online retail in the United States. -
Amazon said its sales grew 37% compared to the same period last year, to $96.1 billion, and profit increased 197% to $6.3 billion. -
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will step down from his role as chief executive later this year and transition to the role of executive chair.