Tech Companies

Amazon.com Inc.

The latest news about Amazon.com Inc.

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Overview
Culture
Recruiting
Facts & Resources
Subsidiaries & Divisions
Competitors

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Overview

Since it pioneered online bookselling in 1995, Amazon.com Inc. has since expanded its product catalog to include toys, electronics, digital music and movies, prescriptions, clothes, apparel and even groceries. The company also offers an array of online services, including self-publishing, an ecommerce platform and a co-branded credit card. Amazon.com rolled out a portable electronic book-reader, the Kindle, which intensified Amazon.com's rivalry with Apple Inc. in the digital media market. The rivalry intensified in March of 2011 when Amazon launched an online music service call Amazon Cloud Drive. The cloud-based service challenges Apple's iTunes program, which requires hard drive space.

The Seattle-based company was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1995. Amazon.com management likes to keep teams small to foster creativity. Jeff Bezos came up with the notion of the "two-pizza team": If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large. That limits a task force to five to seven people, depending on their appetites.

Culture

Amazon.com is known for its relaxed work environment, including a casual dress code and small team groups. In a 2008 US News article, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said, “One piece of the culture here that is true of my personality is I have never believed that you couldn't be serious and have fun at the same time. It's perhaps most important to have fun when stumbling.”

Recruiting

The company also sponsors three employee groups offering employees a forum to build networks and share dialogue. The groups are: BEN-Black Employee Network; GLAmazon-Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Network; and Hoppers-Women in Technology Network.