Amazon - From Online Book Store to Online Marketplace, and Cloud Services

Amazon Today - Online Marketplace of the World

Amazon is more than just an online retailer, it has become the go-to marketplace for all your fashion, gaming and daily necessities.

An online marketplace that doesn't own most of the products, but one you would be sure to visit to cure your shopping addiction.

In a world where we are heavily dependent on our smartphones for our daily tasks, Amazon provides easy checkouts with just a few clicks. The ultimate shopping convenience in the comfort of our hands.

Consumers not able to head out for necessities, items that could not be found natively, and to a certain extent the pandemic, caused demand for online purchases to surge over the past few years.

Research from the news also shows that consumers are bound to retain certain habits they have procured during the pandemic. Online ordering is one of these habits that are staying.

Humble Beginnings As An Online Book Store, That Sells Literal Books

In the early days, when we heard of Amazon, it was nothing big. Most would avoid it altogether, most probably because we were students and already overwhelmed with books and homework. Amazon sold books, that was all it did.

Fast forward a few years, Amazon began venturing out into new areas of business. They started to expand beyond books. While selling books seemed nothing interesting right at the beginning, Amazon has capacity to offer more books than other book sellers at the time.

And books do sell well online, as there is always demand for knowledge.

Rise of the Kindle

Amazon were quick to catch on the e-book trend as well.

When books and reading materials began their transition into digital format, a sign of progression from the internet age, Amazon expanded their business to offer a Kindle handheld. If consumers wanted to take these readings offline, but still not wanting to carry a book, they could purchase Kindle tablets, tailored exclusively for reading.

The first iteration of the Kindle sold out within a few hours of its launch.

An Unexpected Product - The AWS Cloud

As Amazon grew, the company noticed that the tech infrastructure it's originally running on were a little clunky. At the same time, they were already sharing their backend services with business users on a pay-per-use basis, to help offload some tech-related burden that these users had to carry.

Hence, they got down to business to refine their own software.

From there, they realized such dealings had potential to grow upon existing market demand. From there the path was only forward as they progressed towards the ultimate game changer in cloud services - The AWS - Amazon Web Services.

Where would we be today without that little push from cloud services? Well, the answer is obvious. We would still be carry that tiny little thumbdrive with us, without the capability to instantly share files from an online directory that's operated by a cloud.

And probably waste lots of money on computing resources for each company, leaving behind more carbon footprint.

Conclusion

Amazon's progress is one of humble but gradual improvement and also, unexpected events. What is most important is that they have been aware of trends and tried to catch them fast.

Amazon's AWS is still big as of today. Now being one of the most desirable tech companies for graduates to work in, Amazon continues with its innovation on all things tech and consumer.