Amazon dot com
List of mergers and acquisitions by Amazon This list is incomplete ; Amazon logo The Amazon Spheres , part of the Amazon headquarters campus in Seattle Amazon.com, Inc. is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company headquartered in Seattle, Washington . Founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994 as an online bookstore, Amazon went public after an initial public offering on May 15, 1997 during the midst of the dot-com bubble . [1] The funds gained from the IPO allowed Amazon to grow quickly, making its first three acquisitions on April 27, 1998, less than a year after the company had gone public. [2] After the dot-com bubble burst on March 11, 2000, several companies that Amazon had invested in went bankrupt, with Amazon's stock price itself sinking to record lows. [3] Despite Amazon's survival, the company made very few investments for the next several years, only acquiring two companies between 2000 and 2004. The company returned to making multiple