These Are All the Businesses You Never Knew Were Owned by Amazon

Everything about Amazon in 2019 is inconceivably big: Amazon will make up an estimated 38% of the US e-commerce market this year, according to the online commerce research firm eMarketer, and already dominates 67% of the online books, music, and video market; 46% of the online computer and electronics market; 45% of the online toy market; and 34% of online furniture sales. And with more than $25 billion in revenue just from Amazon Web Services last year, Amazon is the world’s largest cloud services provider.

Its sheer size and influence has caught the attention of regulators and lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who proposed a plan to break up Amazon and other technology companies in March. In its defense, Amazon said it makes up just 4% of all US retail sales.

But taken as a whole, Amazon is much more than a retail platform. The company — which originally incorporated on July 5, 1994, under the business name “Cadabra” and started selling books under the new name Amazon on July 16, 1995 — has expanded into a complex web of businesses and subsidiaries that make it easy to walk into and difficult to walk out of. Its reach stretches from review sites like Goodreads to shoe sales on Zappos to devices like Ring to baby clothing sold in its marketplace to educational tools for teachers, like entire math curriculums.

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