It wasn't long ago that the tech titans of today were aggressive upstarts setting out to make our lives easier. What happened?
Even with annual revenue poised to top $350 billion, Amazon continues to report steady revenue growth and has recently started generating hefty profits, thanks to Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing business.
The extent of that business became clear for the first time in April 2015, when Amazon started reporting its finances and revealed that AWS was earning about about $1 billion a year in profits, even as the entire company was breaking even or losing money. In other words, while everybody thought Amazon was an e-retailer with a nice side business in cloud computing, it had quietly built a gigantic and profitable software business.
Last year, AWS earned more than $9 billion in profit on $35 billion in sales, making it the number-three software company by sales volume, trailing only Microsoft andThen, after helping spur the decline of physical retail for years, Amazon jumped into the brick-and-mortar world, buying upscale grocerfor $13.7 billion in 2017. Would Amazon do to groceries what it did to information technology?
Amazon's physical footprint also includes its unmatched network of fulfillment centers and last-mile delivery facilities. It's now America's second largest employer and hasAmazon upset lawmakers in 2017, when it courted proposals for its next headquarters and had cities offering up all sorts subsidies to try and win the deal. It ended up choosing two cities -- New York and Washington, D.C., only to back out of New York at the last minute because of fierce opposition from some locals.
The eccentricity and ambition of CEO Jeff Bezos has contributed to the company's mythos. Bezos spends billions a year on his private space travel company, Blue Origin. He bought the Washington Post in 2013, giving him an influential arm of the national media and turning him into a favorite punching bag for President Donald Trump, as the Post frequently criticized Trump as both candidate and president.
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