Amazon, Port. Amazonas, world's second longest river, c.3,900 mi (6,280 km) long, formed by the junction in N Peru's Andes Mts. of two major headstreams, the Ucayali and the shorter Marañón. It flows across N Brazil before entering the Atlantic Ocean near Belém.

The Amazon carries more water than any other river in the world. The drainage basin is enormous (c.2,500,000 sq mi/6,475,000 sq km; c.35% of South America), gathering waters from both hemispheres and covering not only most of N Brazil but also parts of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. For most of its course the river has an average depth of c.150 ft (50 m). The gradient of the river is very low: Manaus, c.1,000 mi (1,610 km) upstream, is only c.100 ft (30 m) higher than Belém and is an ocean port; ships with a draft of 14 ft (4 m) can reach Iquitos, Peru, c.2,300 mi (3,700 km) from the sea. Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia have international shipping rights on the Amazon. In the lowlands stretching east from the Andes is the largest rain forest (selva) in the world—a wet, green land rich in plant life. The tropical climate is tempered by the heavy rainfall (exceeding 150 in./381 cm annually in parts of the upper and lower regions) and by high relative humidity; the average temperature at Santarém, 400 mi (644 km) upriver, is 78°F; (26°C;).

Course

Geologically, the Amazon basin is a sediment-filled structural depression between crystalline highlands of Brazil and Guiana. The riverbed (1-8 mi/1.6-12.9 km wide) is in a wide floodplain that is up to 30 mi (48 km) wide. For much of its course, the Amazon wanders in a maze of brownish channels amid countless islands, but is unobstructed by falls.

Its headstreams, however, arise cold and clear in the heights of the Andes. They descend northward before turning east to join and form the Amazon (which is, however, occasionally called the Solimões from the Brazilian border to the junction with the Rio Negro). Of the Amazon's more than 500 tributaries, the chief ones are the Negro, Japurá (Caquetá), Putumayo (Içá), and Napo, which enter from the north; and the Javari, Juruá, Purús, Madeira, Tapajós, and Xingú rivers, which enter from the south. The Casiquiare River, a natural canal, links the Amazon basin (through the Rio Negro) with the Orinoco basin.

Below the Xingú the river reaches its delta, with many islands formed by alluvial deposit and submergence of the land. Around the largest of these, Marajó, the river splits into two large streams. The northern stream is the principal outlet and threads its way around many islands. The southern channel, called the Pará River, receives the Tocantins River and has the important port of Belém. The awesome tidal bore (up to 12 ft/3.7 m high) of the Amazon is called pororoca; it travels c.500 mi (800 km) upstream. The river's immense silt-laden discharge is visible far out to sea.

Exploration and Development

The Amazon was probably first seen by Europeans in 1500 when the Spanish commander Vicente Yáñez Pinzón explored the lower part. Real exploration of the river came with the voyage of the Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana down from the Napo in 1540-41; his fanciful stories of female warriors gave the river its name. Not long afterward (1559) the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Ursúa led an expedition down from the Marañón River. In 1637-38 the Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira led the voyage upstream that definitively opened the Amazon to world knowledge. The river continued to be of enormous importance to explorers and naturalists, among them Charles Darwin and Louis Agassiz.

There is archaeological evidence of clustered, densely populated pre-Colombian settlements in parts of the Amazon basin, but at the time of the early European explorations these settlements had already been wiped out, probably by smallpox and other diseases, The valley was largely left to its sparse remaining indigenous inhabitants (mostly groups of the Guaraní-Tupi linguistic stock and of meager material culture) until the mid-19th cent., when steamship service was regularly established on the river and when some settlements were made. In the late 19th and early 20th cent., the brief wild-rubber boom on the upper Amazon attracted settlers from Brazil's northeastern states, and in the 1930s Japanese immigrants began developing jute and pepper plantations. Until recently the area remained largely unpopulated, yielding small quantities of forest products (rubber, timber, vegetable oils, Brazil nuts, and medicinal plants) and cacao. Extensive road networks are now opening these lands to colonization, although agricultural success has been limited by adverse climate, poor soils, and great market distances.

The establishment of a health service (chiefly by launch) in World War II was followed by the creation of a UNESCO research institute in 1948, and several developmental programs, both governmental and private, were set up in Brazil to foster the valley's development. In the 1960s the Amazon region began experiencing increased economic development brought on by tax incentives and construction of the Trans-Amazon Highway, the Belém-Brasília Highway, and two rail lines. Near Manaus and Amapá, factories make use of ample oil and manganese resources. In addition, a port at the Brazilian city of Macapá was connected by rail in the 1950s to the inland stores of manganese.

The Brazilian government implemented a "poles of development" policy in 1974 to plan for population increase. Since 1985 the Carajás project, centered in W Maranhão, has seen the development of major iron ore deposits, the construction of a new railroad, and the initiation of forest clearance, land colonization, cattle ranching, large-scale farming, and urban development on an unprecedented scale. This policy has had mixed results, leading to environmental damage and to the disruption of the original inhabitants' lives, and many settlers in the region do not have title to their land. In 2009 a law was passed that would permit settlers to acquire title, either through a grant or purchase, depending on the size of the plot. Large sections of the rain forest have been destroyed in recent years, threatening rare species of plants and contributing to the increase in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide and the consequent impact on global warming.

Amazon, in Greek mythology, one of a tribe of warlike women who lived in Asia Minor. The Amazons had a matriarchal society, in which women fought and governed while men performed the household tasks. Each Amazon had to kill a man before she could marry, and all male children were either killed or maimed at birth. It was believed that the Amazons cut off one breast in order to shoot and throw spears more effectively. They were celebrated warriors, believed to have been the first to use cavalry, and their conquests were said to have included many parts of Asia Minor, Phrygia, Thrace, and Syria. Several of the finest Greek heroes proved their mettle against the Amazons: Hercules took the golden girdle of Ares from their queen Hippolyte; Theseus abducted Hippolyte's sister Antiope and then defeated a vengeful army of Amazons at Athens. A contingent of Amazons fought with the Trojans under Penthesilea.

In Greek mythology, a member of a race of women warriors. One of the labours of Heracles was to obtain the girdle of the Amazon queen Hippolyte. In another tale, Theseus attacked the Amazons, and they responded by invading Attica, where they were defeated; Theseus married the Amazon Antiope. In ancient Greek art, Amazons resembled Athena (with weapons and helmet) and later Artemis (in a thin dress girded high for speed).

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Amazon.com, Inc. is an American electronic commerce (e-commerce) company in Seattle, Washington. Amazon was one of the first major companies to sell goods by Internet, and was an iconic "stock in which to invest" of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the collapse, the public became skeptical about Amazon's business model, although it has since remained profitable.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994, and launched it online in 1995. Amazon.com started as an on-line bookstore, but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs, MP3 format, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China and Japan. It also provides global shipping to certain countries for some of its products.

History and business model

Amazon was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called "regret minimization framework", his effort to fend off regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush. While company lore says Bezos wrote the business plan while he and his wife drove from New York to Seattle, Washington, that account appears to be apocryphal.

The company began as an online bookstore named "Cadabra.com", a name quickly abandoned for sounding like "cadaver"; while the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books might offer 200,000 titles, an on-line bookstore could offer more. Bezos renamed the company "Amazon" after the world's biggest river. Since 2000, Amazon's logotype is an arrow leading from A to Z, representing the desire to sell many products.

In 1994, the company incorporated in the state of Washington, beginning service in July 1995, and was reincorporated in 1996 in Delaware. The first book Amazon.com sold was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. Amazon.com issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at an IPO price of US$18.00 per share (U.S. $1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual: the company did not expect a profit for four to five years; the strategy was effective. Amazon grew steadily in the late 1990s while other Internet companies grew blindingly fast. Amazon's "slow" growth provoked stockholder complaints: that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the dot-com bubble burst, and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered, and, finally, turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: U.S. $5 million, just 1¢ per share, on revenues of more than U.S. $1 billion, but the profit was symbolically important.

The company remains profitable: 2003 net income was U.S.$35.3 million, U.S.$588.50 million in 2004, U.S.$359 million in 2005, and U.S.$190 million in 2006 (including a U.S.$662 million charge for R&D in 2006), nevertheless, the firm's cumulative profits remain negative. As of September 2007, the accumulated deficit stood at U.S.$1.58 billion. Revenues increased thanks to product diversification and an international presence: US$3.9 billion in 2002, U.S.$5.3 billion in 2003, U.S.$6.9 billion in 2004, U.S.$8.5 billion in 2005, and U.S.$10.7 billion in 2006. On November 21, 2005, Amazon entered the S&P 500 index, replacing AT&T after it merged with SBC Communications.

In 1999, Time Magazine named Bezos Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing on-line shopping.

Merchant partnerships

The Web site CDNOW (cdnow.com) is powered and hosted by Amazon. Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would similarly bring up Amazon.com's Toys & Games tab; however, this relationship was terminated as the result of a lawsuit.

Amazon.com powers and operates retail web sites for Target, Sears Canada, Benefit Cosmetics, Bebe Stores, Timex Corporation, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare and Lacoste. For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer, Benefit Cosmetics' UK entity and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform from whence a customer can interchangeably interact with the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, and phone-based customer service agents. Amazon Web Services also powers AOL's Shop@AOL.

Locations

Headquarters

The company's global headquarters is located on Seattle, Washington's Beacon Hill. It has offices throughout other parts of greater Seattle including Union Station and The Columbia Center.

Amazon has announced plans to move its headquarters to the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle beginning in mid-2010, with full occupancy by 2011. This move will consolidate all Seattle employees onto the new 11-building campus.

Software development centers

The company employs software developers in medium- to large-sized centers across the globe. International locations include:

• Slough (England)
• Edinburgh (Scotland)
• Dublin(Ireland)
• Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad (India)
• Cape Town (South Africa)
• Iaşi (Romania)
• Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan) (closed in 2005)
• Beijing (China)

Fulfillment and warehousing

Fulfillment centers are located in the following cities, often near airports:

• North America:

*Arizona, USA: Phoenix

*Delaware, USA: New Castle

*Indiana, USA: Whitestown, Munster

*Kansas, USA: Coffeyville

*Kentucky, USA: Campbellsville, Hebron (near CVG), Lexington, and Louisville

*Nevada, USA: Fernley and Red Rock (near 4SD)

*Pennsylvania, USA: Carlisle, Chambersburg, Hazleton, and Lewisberry

*Texas, USA: Dallas/Fort Worth

*Ontario, Canada: Mississauga (a Canada Post facility)

• Europe:

*Munster, Ireland: Cork

*Bedfordshire, England, UK: Marston Gate

*Inverclyde, Scotland, UK: Gourock

*Fife, Scotland, UK: Glenrothes

*Neath Port Talbot, Wales, UK: Crymlyn Burrows

*Loiret, France: Orléans-Boigny (2000),

*Loiret, France: Orléans-Saran (2007),

*Hesse, Germany: Bad Hersfeld

*Saxony, Germany: Leipzig

• Asia:

*Chiba, Japan

*Guangzhou, China

*Shanghai, China

*Beijing, China

Product lines

Amazon has steadily branched into retail sales of music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, groceries, and more.

The company launched Amazon.com Auctions, its own Web auctions service, in March 1999. However it failed to chip away at industry pioneer eBay's juggernaut growth. Amazon Auctions was followed by the launch of a fixed-price marketplace business called zShops in September 1999, and a failed Sotheby's/Amazon partnership called sothebys.amazon.com in November.

Amazon no longer mentions either Auctions or zShops on its main pages and the help page for sellers now only mentions the Marketplace. Old links to zShop () now simply redirect to the Amazon home page, while old links to Auctions () take users to a transactions history page. New product listings are no longer possible for either service.

Although zShops failed to live up to its expectations, it laid the groundwork for the hugely successful Amazon Marketplace service launched in 2001 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. Today, Amazon Marketplace's main rival is eBay's Half.com service.

Beginning August 2005, Amazon began selling products under its own private label, "Pinzon"; the initial trademark applications suggested the company intended to focus on textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods. In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a larger and more diverse list of goods, and to register a new design consisting of the "word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter O whose space appears at the "one o'clock" position.". The list of products registered for coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry.

On May 16, 2007 Amazon announced its intention to launch its own online music store. The store launched in the US in public beta September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management..

In August 2007, Amazon announced AmazonFresh, a grocery service offering perishable and nonperishable foods. Customers can have orders delivered to their homes at dawn or during a specified daytime window. Delivery was initially restricted to residents of Mercer Island, Washington, and was later expanded to several ZIP codes in Seattle proper. AmazonFresh also operated pick-up locations in the suburbs of Bellevue and Kirkland from summer 2007 through early 2008.

In 2008 Amazon expanded into film production and is currently funding the film The Stolen Child with 20th Century Fox.

Review and recommendation feature

Amazon.com is known for its candid reviews and its capabilities for recommending products to its customers. The customer reviews are monitored for all negative or indecent comments that are directed at anything, or anyone, but the product itself. In regards to the reviews lacking relative restrictions, Robert Spector who is the author of the book Amazon.com, describes how “when publishers and authors asked Bezos why Amazon.com would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that Amazon.com was ‘taking a different approach...we want to make every book available – the good, the bad, and the ugly...to let truth loose’” (Spector 132).

Website

The domain amazon.com attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey. This was twice the numbers of walmart.com.

A popular feature of Amazon is the ability for users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. As part of their review, users must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Such rating scales provide a basic idea of the popularity and dependability of a product.

The review feature is an important and highly influential function for customers and one of the main reasons for amazon.com’s success at selling books. As with book reviews anywhere, the buyer must beware that all reviewers have bias. Under normal circumstances, reviews give the reader at least a modest basis for evaluating a given book.

Because it is an open forum, the reader can benefit from a variety of perspectives. However, the anonymity of web reviewers increases the chances of abuse in the form of self-praise, praise from friends, or malicious criticism. This situation was confirmed in 2004 when the origin of reviews was accidentally made public on an amazon site, and some authors openly confirmed their glowing reviews of their own books.

Additionally, Amazon created a feature in recent years that allowed users to comment on reviews. This has been met with a mixed reaction, since a few of the high-profile sellers have been getting "spammed" in these forums, regardless of the quality of the reviews. Amazon has done little to enforce the rules of these forums, but did recently add an "ignore" button feature to help counteract the spamming. Nonetheless, at least one critic in the top 50 quit writing for Amazon and began contributing to another site due to the spam issues and Amazon's inability to enforce the rules.

Amazon provides an optional badging option for reviewers, e.g., to indicate the “real name” of the reviewer (based on a credit card) or to indicate that the reviewer is one of the “top” (most popular) reviewers. Some books have well over one thousand reviews (e.g. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged), but many books, especially new ones, have none.

The U.S. site generally has the most reviews, but other country sites offer the perspectives of other reviewers. A review posted on one site is not necessarily visible on another site.

Search Inside the Book is a feature which allows customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog. The feature started with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003. There are currently about 250,000 books in the program. Amazon has cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches.

To avoid copyright violations, Amazon.com does not return the computer-readable text of the book but rather a picture of the matching page, disables printing, and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. One author observed that his entire book could be read online by searching a few words. Amazon is planning to launch Search Inside the Book internationally. Additionally, customers can purchase access to the entire book online via the Amazon Upgrade program, although the selection of books eligible for this service is currently limited.

According to information in Amazon.com discussion forums, Amazon derives about 40% of its sales from affiliates whom they call "Associates", and third party sellers who list and sell products on the Amazon website(s).

An Associate is an independent seller or business that receives a commission for referring customers to the Amazon.com site. Associates do this by placing links on their websites to the Amazon homepage or to specific products. If a referral results in a sale, the Associate receives a commission from Amazon. Worldwide, Amazon has "over 900,000 members" in its affiliate programs. Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service.

Amazon was one of the first online businesses to set up an affiliate marketing program. AStore is a new affiliate product that allows Associates to embed a subset of Amazon products within, or linked to from, another website.

Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazon's worldwide web sites in 2007. Selling on Amazon has become more popular as Amazon expanded into a variety of categories beyond media, and built a variety of features to support volume selling. Unlike eBay/Paypal, Amazon sellers do not have to maintain separate payment accounts - all payments and payment security are handled by Amazon itself.

According to the Internet audience measurement website Compete.com, Amazon attracts approximately 50 million U.S. consumers to its website on a monthly basis.

Acquisitions and spinoffs

• In April 1998, Amazon bought the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
• In August 1998, Amazon bought Cambridge, Massachusetts-based PlanetAll for 800,000 shares of Amazon stock. PlanetAll operated a web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. In the same deal, Amazon acquired Sunnyvale-based Junglee, an XML-based data mining startup for 1.6 million shares of Amazon stock. The two deals together were valued at about US$280 million at the time.
• In June 1999, Amazon bought Alexa Internet, Accept.com and Exchange.com in a set of stock deals worth approximately US$645 million.
• In 2004, Amazon purchased Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce website. It also debuted A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology.
• In March 2005, Amazon acquired BookSurge, a print on demand company, and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company.
• In July 2005, Amazon purchased CreateSpace (formerly CustomFlix), a Scotts Valley, CA-based distributor of on-demand DVDs. Since the acquisition, CreateSpace has expanded its on-line services to include on-demand books and CDs, as well as video downloads. On July 30, 2007, the National Archives announced that it would make thousands of historic films available for purchase through CreateSpace.
• In February 2006, Amazon acquired Shopbop, a Madison, Wisconsin-based retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women.
• In May 2007, Amazon acquired dpreview.com, a London-based digital photography review website created by Phil Askey as his personal hobby website and Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States.
• In January 2008, Amazon announced that it would acquire audiobook provider Audible.com for $300 million in cash.
• In August 2008, Amazon announced it had an agreement to purchase Victoria, B.C. based Abebooks, seller of new, used, out of print and rare books.
• In late August 2008, Amazon announced that it would acquire Seattle-based Shelfari, a book-based social network site, for an undisclosed sum. The move comes less than a month after Amazon’s acquisition of AbeBooks, As part of that acquisition Amazon also got a stake in Shelfari’s competitor LibraryThing, which AbeBooks had previously purchased a 40% stake in.

Noteworthy events

In 2002, Amazon became the exclusive retailer for the much-hyped Segway Human Transporter. Bezos was an early supporter of the Segway before its details were made public.

In 2003, Amazon purchased the rival online music retalier CD Now, which was founded in 1994.

On June 21, 2003, Amazon coordinated what was at the time one of the largest sales and distribution events in e-commerce history with the sale of over 1.3 million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, since beaten by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with a sale of over 2 million copies preordered in 2007.

On July 16, 2005, Amazon celebrated its 10th anniversary by telecasting a worldwide live concert hosted by Bill Maher and artists such as Bob Dylan and Norah Jones.

On December 13, 2007, Amazon paid £1,950,000 for a hand written copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling.

In December 2007, Amazon was fined €100,000 by The Tribunal de Grande Instance in France for offering free shipping. The 1981 Lang Law prohibits companies from discounting books by more than 5%.

Products and services

Amazon.com has incorporated a number of products and services into its shopping model, either through development or acquisition.

2001

Honor System and donations: The Honor System was originally launched in 2001 to allow customers to make donations or buy digital content, with Amazon collecting 2.9 percent of the payment plus a flat fee of $0.30 USD.

2002

Web Services:Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002. The service provides programmatic access to many features leveraged behind the scenes on its website.

2004

Amazon also created "channels" to benefit certain causes. In 2004, Amazon's "Presidential Candidates" allowed customers to donate US$5-200 to the campaigns of 2004 U.S. presidential hopefuls. Amazon has periodically reactivated a Red Cross donation channel after such tragedies as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. After the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Amazon set up an online donation channel to the American Red Cross, waiving its processing fee. As of January 2005, over 162,000 individuals had donated over US$13.1 million. Similar channels were set up for the British, Canadian, French, German and Japanese Red Cross organizations. Over 7,000 Britons donated more than US$350,000; 900 Canadians over US$56,000; 660 French over US$23,000; 2,900 Germans over US$145,000; and 1,900 Japanese over US$66,000.

2005

Prime:Amazon Prime offers customers unlimited expedited shipping with no minimum purchase amount for a flat annual fee. The service also offers discounted priority shipping rates. Amazon launched the program in the continental United States in 2005, in Japan in June 2007, in the United Kingdom and Germany in November 2007, and in France (as "Amazon Premium") in October 2008.Shorts:Launched in 2005, Amazon Shorts offers exclusive short form content, including short stories and non-fiction pieces from best-selling authors, all available for immediate download at US$.49. As of June 2007, the program has over 1,700 pieces and is adding about 50 new pieces per week.Mechanical Turk: In November 2005, Amazon.com began testing Amazon Mechanical Turk, an application programming interface (API) allowing programs to dispatch tasks to human processors.

2006

S3:In March 2006, Amazon launched an online storage service called Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). An unlimited number of data objects, from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes in size, can be stored in S3 and distributed via [] or BitTorrent. The service charges monthly fees for data stored and for data transferred.Discussion boards: In August 2006, Amazon launched product wikis (later folded into Amapedia) and discussion forums for certain products using guidelines that follow standard message board conventions.EC2:In August 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a virtual site farm, allowing users to use the Amazon infrastructure with its high reliability to run diverse applications ranging from running simulations to web hosting.

2007

Amapedia:In January 2007 Amazon launched Amapedia, a collaborative wiki for user-generated content to replace ProductWiki.Unbox:In March 2007, Amazon launched an online video on demand service, which has been criticized for its use of digital rights management (DRM).MP3 downloads: In September 2007, Amazon launched a new music store (currently in beta) called Amazon MP3, which sells downloadable tracks, all in the MP3 format and most recorded at 256 kilobits per second variable bitrate (VBR). Amazon's terms of use agreements legally restrict use of the music, but Amazon does not use DRM to enforce those terms.

Amazon MP3 is selling music from the Big 4 record labels, EMI, Universal, Warner Bros. Records, and Sony BMG, as well as many independents; as of January 2008 they are the only store to sell DRM-free music from all Big 4 labels. Previous to the launch of this service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a similar music store with a variable pricing model based on demand.Vine:In August 2007 Amazon launched Amazon Vine, which allows top product reviewers free access to pre-release products from vendors participating in the program. Reviewers may either return the used product to Amazon, or post a review and keep the product, within a few months of receipt.FPS:In August 2007 Amazon launched a payment service specifically targeted at developers. Amazon FPS has facilities for developing many different charging models including micro-payments. The service also gives developers easy access to Amazon customers.Kindle:In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content over "Whispernet," a free EV-DO wireless service on the Sprint Nextel network. Initial offerings included approximately 115,000 books, newspapers, magazines and blogs. The screen uses E Ink technology to reduce battery consumption. In 2008 Amazon claimed its library had grown to 170,000 titles.SimpleDB:In December 2007, Amazon introduced SimpleDB, a database system, allowing users of its other infrastructure to utilize a high reliability high performance database system.

2008

Amazon MP3: In January 2008 Amazon announced they would be rolling out their Amazon MP3 service to their subsidiary websites worldwide throughout the year.

Undated

Connect:Amazon Connect enables authors to post remarks on their book pages and to customers who have bought their books. WebStore:WebStore by Amazon allows businesses to create e-commerce websites using Amazon technology. Merchants can customize their sites using their own photos and branding. Sellers pay a commission of 7 percent, which includes credit-card processing fees and fraud protection, and a subscription fee of $59.95/month for an unlimited number of webstores and listings.

Controversies

Trademark infringement

In 1999 the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative of Minneapolis, Minnesota sued Amazon.com for trademark infringement. The cooperative had been using the name "Amazon" since 1970, but reached an out-of-court agreement to share the name with the on-line retailer.

Patent use

The company has been controversial for its alleged use of patents as a competitive hindrance. The "1-click patent is perhaps the best-known example of this. Amazon's use of the one-click patent against competitor Barnes and Noble's website led the Free Software Foundation to announce a boycott on Amazon in December 1999. The boycott was discontinued in September 2002.

On February 22, 2000, the company was granted a patent covering an internet-based customer referral system, or what is commonly called an "affiliate program". Reaction was swift and negative. Industry leaders Tim O'Reilly and Charlie Jackson spoke out against the patent, and O'Reilly published an open letter to Bezos protesting the 1-click patent and the affiliate program patent, and petitioning him to "avoid any attempts to limit the further development of internet commerce".

O'Reilly collected 10,000 signatures with this petition. Bezos responded with his own open letter. The protest ended with O'Reilly and Bezos visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.

On February 25, 2003, the company was granted a patent titled "Method and system for conducting a discussion relating to an item on Internet discussion boards".

On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a reexamination of the "One-Click" patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley, who cited as prior art an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system.

Canadian operations

Amazon has a Canadian site in both English and French, but is prevented from operating any headquarters, servers, fulfillment centers or call centers in Canada due to that country's legal restrictions on foreign-owned booksellers. Instead, Amazon's Canadian site originates in the United States, and Amazon has an agreement with Canada Post to handle distribution within Canada and for the use of the Crown corporation's Mississauga, Ontario shipping facility. The launch of Amazon.ca generated controversy in Canada. In 2002, the Canadian Booksellers Association and Indigo Books and Music sought a court ruling that Amazon's partnership with Canada Post represented an attempt to circumvent Canadian law, but the litigation was dropped in 2004.

Customer service

Amazon.com previously did not publish its toll-free customer service number on its own web site. However, customers can now submit written customer service requests (which are answered by e-mail), call a toll-free number, or use a click-to-call service to be connected by phone to an available service representative.

Before Amazon published its phone number, numerous web pages existed solely to publish the Amazon.com customer service phone numbers. One such page received in excess of 23,000 visits in December 2004 alone. Despite the perceived difficulty in reaching customer service by phone, Amazon.com "remains the leader among e-tailers" in customer satisfaction according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index's fourth-quarter 2007 survey.

Labor relations

Amazon has opposed efforts by trades unions to organize in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

In 2001, 850 employees in Seattle were laid off by Amazon.com after an unionisation drive. The Washington Alliance of Technological Workers (WashTech) accused the company of violating union laws, and claimed Amazon managers subjected them to intimidation and heavy propaganda. Amazon denies any link between the unionisation effort and the lay-offs.

Also in 2001, Amazon.co.uk hired a US union-busting organization, The Burke Group, to assist in defeating a union recognition campaign by the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU, now part of Amicus) to achieve recognition in the Milton Keynes distribution depot. It was alleged that the company victimised or sacked four union members during the 2001 recognition drive and held a series of captive meetings with employees.

Some employees of Amazon in the United Kingdom are required to submit to drug tests and can have their employment terminated on a positive test. However, the reliability of the tests has been called into question, as in the case of an Amazon worker who won a tribunal case against the company.

The Humane Society of the United States v. Amazon.com, Inc., et al.

Amazon at one time carried two cockfighting magazines and two dog fighting videos although the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) contends that the sale of these materials is a violation of U.S. Federal law. The Humane Society of the United States has filed a lawsuit against Amazon. A campaign to boycott Amazon purchases gained momentum in August 2007 after the much publicized dog fighting case involving NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

On May 21, 2008, Marburger Publishing agreed to settle with the Humane Society by requesting that Amazon stop offering their magazine The Gamecock for subscription. The second magazine named in the Humane Society lawsuit, The Feathered Warrior, remains available.

Reader reviews credibility

A 2004 glitch in Amazon.ca's review system revealed that many well-established authors were anonymously giving themselves glowing reviews, with some revealed to be anonymously giving "rival" authors terrible reviews. The glitch in the system was fixed and those reviews have since been removed or made non anonymous.

BookSurge

In March 2008, sales representatives of Amazon's BookSurge division started contacting publishers of print on demand titles to inform them that for Amazon to continue selling their POD-produced books, they would need to sign agreements with Amazon's own BookSurge POD company. Publishers were told that eventually, the only POD titles that Amazon would be selling would be those printed by their own company, BookSurge. Some publishers felt that this ultimatum amounted to monopoly abuse, and questioned the ethics of the move and its legality under anti-trust law.

Interfering with publishers' direct sales

In 2008, Amazon UK came under criticism for attempting to prevent publishers from direct selling at discount from their own websites. Amazon's argument was that they should be able to pay the publishers based on the lower prices offered on their websites, rather than on the full RRP.

Dispute with Hachette Livre UK

In June 2008 Amazon UK drew criticism in the British publishing community following their withdrawal from sale of key titles published by Hachette Livre UK. The withdrawal is apparently intended to put pressure on the publisher to provide levels of discount described by the trade as unreasonable. Curtis Brown's managing director Jonathan Lloyd was quoted in The Bookseller magazine as saying: “I think the entire industry of publishers, authors and agents are 100% behind [Hachette]. Someone has to draw a line in the sand. Publishers have given 1% a year away to retailers, so where does it stop? Using authors as a financial football is disgraceful.”

Easter eggs

Two easter eggs exist on Amazon.com's website. They are reached by invisible links at the center of the page below the last line of text.

1. An invisible link at the very bottom of the " Directory of All Stores" page leads to a February 2002 tribute to retiring Amazon.com Senior Vice President David Risher, " Amazon.com's favorite site surfer".
2. At the very bottom of Amazon.com's Sports & Outdoors store, an invisible link leads to a November 2007 tribute to retiring Chief Information Officer Rick Dalzell, " Amazon.com's favorite fisherman"

Additionally, at the bottom of the source code for the main page the word 'MEOW' is written in a comment.

See also

• Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN)
• Statistically Improbable Phrases: Amazon.com's phrase extraction technique for indexing books.
• Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
• Amazon MP3
• Amazon Web Services
• Online shopping

References

Further reading

• Robert Spector (2000). amazon.com - Get Big Fast : Inside the Revolutionary Business Model That Changed the World. Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-662041-4.
• Mike Daisey (2002). 21 Dog Years. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2580-5.
• Mara Friedman (2004). Amazon.com for Dummies. Wiley Publishing. ISBN 0-7645-5840-4.
• James Marcus (2004). Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut. W.W. Norton. ISBN 1-56584-870-5.
• Jakob Nielsen, "Amazon: No longer the role model for e-commerce design", Useit.com, July 25, 2005.
• "A conversation with Werner Vogels", ACM Queue, May 2006.

External links

• Amazon.com
• Amazon.co.uk
• WebStore by Amazon
• List of International Websites
• Amazon.com Organizational Chart