Amazon Turns 30 45
Amazon.com marked its 30th anniversary Wednesday, three decades after Jeff Bezos launched the company as an online bookstore promising "one million titles" from Seattle. The e-commerce giant began in 1995 with Bezos, his then-wife MacKenzie Scott, and seven employees.
The company now employs 1.5 million people and carries a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion. Amazon has expanded from books into groceries through its $13.7 billion Whole Foods acquisition, cloud computing via Amazon Web Services, and entertainment with Prime Video.
The company now employs 1.5 million people and carries a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion. Amazon has expanded from books into groceries through its $13.7 billion Whole Foods acquisition, cloud computing via Amazon Web Services, and entertainment with Prime Video.
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I care.
Deeply. Passionately. Irrevocably. Without hesitation. With great desire and understanding.
Do you care?
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People who bought shares last millennium.
First thing you ordered? (Score:1)
You can get it in your order history if you don't know.
For me, it was a book on Java.
I wish I had bought their stock instead.
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1998 was my first order.
It was a VHS tape of Doctor Who: Revenge of the Cybermen
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Books: The Bourne trilogy, which, contrary to the movies, were very entertaining.
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I liked the movies and found them highly entertaining.
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It only goes back to 2003 and then it's archived but as of May 15th this year, the archive isn't functional. Just checked. It was pretty neat looking at all the stuff I've bought over the past 22 years. A lot of books (physical and digital), games, movies and every so often some house ware stuff. It was a shame to see I couldn't find my first purchase ever though.
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A book for my company's owner in 1995. I was the company IT admin and he told me to order a book on Amazon for him. I thought it was odd that he was interested in the Amazon. He then pointed out that it was a web site. First time I had heard of it. It was great until about 2015. I have avoided the Amazon ever since. Nothing but a scammy Asian flea market now.
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1999, some books:
2001 A Space Odyssey
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Good Omens
It
Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead
Neuromancer
Space Opera
Starcraft Campaign Editor : Prima's Official Strategy Guide
The Lord of the Rings
Y2K : It's Already Too Late
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1999: "Perl Cookbook" and "The Education of Hyman Kaplan"
Wow - 26 years! It's been 16 years since my last badly-written Perl (or any Perl!).
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Yeah, Core Java 2 for college. Wow... I feel old now.
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Someday I may get beyond page 9.
For me, Amazon is the vendor of no choice. Maybe someday they'll go the way of the company where I learned that phrase.
My personal boycott of Amazon (Score:1)
My second and final Amazon purchase was decades ago. Both purchases were books, but the website smelled of evil. To high heaven, and I decided I wanted no part of it.
Nothing I've learned since then has improved my sentiments towards Amazon and all things Amazon.
Solutions? Can't get there from here. Sad to report that's how it looks to me.
And yet I wonder how bad it has gotten. For example, how good is Amazon at pulling the suckers' triggers? I think the biggest mind trick would be knowing when to show a neg
Re: your mom (Score:3, Funny)
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If I boycotted all the "mean" companies, I'd likely only be able to shop at farmers markets, would have to make my own clothes, wouldn't own any electronics, no car, unlikely to even have a bicycle. If I did have some of those things, they would likely being highly artisan and custom done by some highly specialized small firm but that would still exclude cars, electronics, housing, pretty much anything that requires large capital investments as opposed to something that could be done in someone's garage.
So
Re:My personal boycott of Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
People who think like you are the reason that not just "mean," but truly harmful and unethical companies prosper. You have agency. You can make decisions for yourself. You can, and should, make the best decisions, even if they make you less convenient, comfortable, or trendy.
My family stopped shopping Amazon altogether several years back, along with Walmart. We do shop at farmer's markets, but we also go to neighborhood markets and co-ops. We buy secondhand clothes (so could you, despite your attempt at a false choice between Amazon and having to make your own clothes, which is just silly). We buy used cars so that local dealers profit, without directly supporting manufacturers whose choices we dislike. And so on.
It isn't convenient or trendy. We don't care. We save a ton of money this way. And we find that we generally don't support people and practices we find objectionable. We're probably indirectly supporting some amount of evil, but we're affirmatively doing all we can to minimize our participation in it.
You could too, if you wanted to. Or, you can keep pretending you're powerless to be an agent for change, and you'll find that your prophecy comes true. But I dare you to do better.
Re: My personal boycott of Amazon (Score:2)
You can buy from the least worst though, instead of the most worst. Since the wealthy buy legislation, where you spend money is your most important vote under capitalism.
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I understand your sentiment and yes, how we spend our money is likely our best "vote" on which companies we would like to see thrive. With that said, which car company is ethical again? Yeah, second hand or not, you still driving that car (and support oil companies or Musk if you EV).
Clothing, second hand, were still most likely made in Vietnam for pennies on the dollar in conditions that would have the place shutdown in USA before you could blink. So again, while you didn't directly buy from then manufactu
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Some Mennonites and even a few Amish-run businesses do sell through Amazon, especially those in more modern or entrepreneurial communities.
They often make and sell:
– Handmade furniture
– Quilts and crafts
– Leather goods
– Soaps, candles, herbal remedies
– Baked goods (dry mixes, not perishables)
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So, you said a lot of words about your boycott, but not what motivated you to start your boycott.
I'm no Amazon zealot, but I don't find them any sleazier than any other major store chain, online or brick & mortar.
So what *is* your beef with Amazon, that sets it apart from all other large companies?
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Sorry, I can't remember the details after so many years, and I'm not sure how much they matter. I suspect it was mostly the recommendation engine on the website, but that's a book-specific black hole. Most product categories can't be abused that much. I vaguely remember negative reactions to the kinds of reviews that were being brought to my attention, but that's actually the opposite of a black hole problem. On that side Amazon has (for most products) collected far more reviews than you want to read and th
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So if I understand what you're saying, you're boycotting Amazon, but you can't remember why?
Hey, I'm no great fan of Amazon, but I don't base that on a vague notion that I've long ago forgotten. The site has both good and bad things about it. On one hand, you can find literally anything there. On the other hand, their search sucks, and their marketplace is filled with cheap knockoffs. But as with any other shopping site or store, if you do your homework, you can find good products at good prices.
I don't fin
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NAK
Re:Amazon Turns 30, AOC Celebrates (Score:5, Insightful)
"comedy is legal again"
Great. When does it get funny again?
No mention of expanding into retail... (Score:2)
I like how they only expanded into groceries, video, cloud computing, and.... nope.. that's it..
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Ah, the good old days (Score:2)
When nerdy sites like slashdot were filled with flamewars over whether Amazon was a good or a bad actor on the web. Haven't seen any good faith actor arguments in their favor in a few years now.
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You probably missed my posts because they were modded into obscurity, but I worked at Amazon for 9 years and it was the greatest job that I've ever had. I got to do challenging and cutting edge work with some of the smartest people that I've ever known, all while they threw piles of money at me (average salary at Amazon is over a hundred grand). It was a great way to wrap up a career.
Walmart advertising pays for a lot of anti-Amazon articles squalling about how badly their warehouse workers (less than 1/5
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You probably missed my posts because they were modded into obscurity, but I worked at Amazon for 9 years and it was the greatest job that I've ever had. I got to do challenging and cutting edge work with some of the smartest people that I've ever known, all while they threw piles of money at me (average salary at Amazon is over a hundred grand). It was a great way to wrap up a career.
Walmart advertising pays for a lot of anti-Amazon articles squalling about how badly their warehouse workers (less than 1/5 of the staff) are treated, probably to divert attention from how badly they treat their own employees. I've done warehouse and shipping work in the past and at Amazon worked with people who advanced out of the FCs, and the jobs they describe are head and shoulders better than my own experiences. Their pay, benefits, working conditions and safety are far and away better than any non-Teamster warehouse position out there.
Having spoken in real-world circumstances with several acquaintances that have worked at the local Amazon warehouse, you may be speaking of a past iteration of Amazon, but you're certainly not talking about the present as far as those particular jobs are concerned. From what I'm told now, it's a grindhouse where you run the risk of being fired every second you are there, while being pushed to move faster always. They were going to be shining knights of capitalism in this area when they built the facility, n
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That's every warehouse job.
1999 (Score:2)
Snow Crash & Ender's Game. I had to look that up although I knew I bought books.
As I remember, it was 2001 for my first purchase on Newegg. It was two video cards, identical, for my wife & I. Newlyweds playing video games together! What video cards? I don't remember but I think it was Gforce 3. I do remember that they both had to be replaced under warrenty by PNY. Bad capacitors. Newegg dumped customer's older order history & it kina pissed me off. I used to be such a Newegg fan.
Just 4 years after the Mosaic browser (Score:2)
Mosaic, the first widely-used browser, was released in 1991. Amazon was born just four years later. Kind of gives a glimpse of just how quickly the technology took root, and gave birth to new ways of doing business, that had never before been conceived.
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Bought my first books online on Compuserve way before Amazon.:-)
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Sure, and I bought plane tickets on CompuServe using EaasySabre, before Travelocity. But only nerds did such things in those days, not "regular" people.
Launched with venture capital allowing 10 years.. (Score:1)
...of nothing but losses before showing a profit. A luxury none of the bookstores driven out of business by Amazon shared. Much like how Uber has done nothing but lose money while investors keep waiting for self-driving cars to become a reality any day now.
Any day now.
December 17, 2000 (Score:2)
I purchased a DVD - Nosferatu the Vampyre. As of today, the order status is still "delayed, not yet shipped".