Amazon.com Nears 10-Year Anniversary

mopslik writes "Amazon.com is nearing its 10-year anniversary. "Soon after Amazon.com Inc. debuted 10 years ago, Jeff Bezos and his handful of employees spent late summer nights packing books in a tiny warehouse, scrambling to ship a growing gush of orders. Today, the man who has grown accustomed to being hailed the king of Internet commerce runs a global powerhouse that did nearly $7 billion in sales last year, dealing in everything from banjo cases to wild boar baby back ribs." Although Bezos has drawn some ire from his collection of patents, there's no arguing that his company is one of the most successful online sites today."

Comments

Remember how they used to lose money?

[ackthpt]

Seems like for the first couple years they lost money, more money and more money still. They were predicted to go with the rest of the dot bombers.

$7 billion... Are they turning a profit? I suppose so. I'm sure I did my part, after my favorite tech bookstores (Computer Literacy) closed up shops to go on-line and became fathead or fatbrain whatever. Saving a couple bucks is OK, but I know I spent a ton on programming books when I had the chance to flip through them. Now I have only reviewers to trust and often they're not looking for the same things I am (good table of contents and a good comprehensive index are essential, along with clear code examples which are easy to follow from the discussion.)

Man... what went wrong?

BTW, how many of you have the gifts they used to send out to loyal customers? I've got a couple travel coffee cups, unopened (being a coffee drinker means always having too many things to drink it out of, as people give you them, they appear out of the ether, multiply in the backs of cupboards, etc. You'd think they were an alien species bent on world domination or were socks in their larval form.)