Amazon: The Birth of Online Shopping

Amazon box

Sunday, July 16 — On this date in 1995, a small start-up company launched its business of selling books online out of a two-car garage in Bellevue, Washington. The first item purchased was a book titled “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.” The 1995 garage operation was Amazon.com.

Amazon_logoAmazon now has some 340,000 employees and around 45,000 robots to pack and ship the annual $136 billion worth of books and much else. Not all of America’s 28,000 electronic shopping ventures do so well, but last year internet sales totaled nearly $395 billion, or over 8 percent of all retail sales.

You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online here.

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