Amazon (company)

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Amazon.com, Inc. , doing business as Amazon ( ), is a trading company of electronics and cloud computing America based in Seattle, Washington, founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994. the tech giant is world's largest Internet retailer as measured by revenue and market capitalization, and the second largest after the Alibaba Group in terms of total sales. Amazon.com site started as an online bookstore and later diversified to sell downloads/streaming video, download/streaming MP3 downloads/streaming audiobooks, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics - Kindle e-readers, tablet Fire, Fire TV, and Echo - and is a service provider in the world's largest cloud infrastructure (IaaS and PaaS). Amazon also sells a product-specific low-end products under the AmazonBasics brand homemade.

Amazon has separate retail websites for the United States, Britain and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, and Mexico. In 2016, the Dutch language version, Poland, and Turkey on the German Amazon website was also launched. Amazon also offers international shipping on some products to certain other countries.

In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization. Amazon is the fourth-most valuable company public in the world (behind only Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft), the largest Internet company by revenue in the world, and after Walmart, the second largest company in the United States. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $ 13.4 billion, which considerably increased the presence of the Amazon as a retailer of brick-and-mortar. This acquisition is interpreted by some as a direct attempt to challenge the traditional retail store Walmart. In 2018, for the first time, Jeff Bezos released in the shareholder letter Amazon Amazon Prime customer number, which at 100 million, around 64% of households in the United States.

Video Amazon (company)

Histori

The company was founded as a result of what Jeff Bezos called his "regret minimization framework," which describes an effort to fend off regret for not participate quickly in the booming Internet business during that time. In 1994, Bezos left a job as vice president of D. E. Shaw & amp; Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle, Washington. He began working on a business plan for what would eventually become Amazon.com.

On July 5, 1994, Bezos initially joined the company in the State of Washington named Cadabra, Inc. Bezos changed the name of Amazon.com, Inc. a few months later, after a lawyer misheard the original name as "carcass". In September 1994, Bezos bought Relentless.com URL and briefly considered naming their online stores, Relentless, but friends say that the name sounds a little creepy. Domain is still owned by Bezos and was transferred to the retailer.

Bezos chose the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary; he settled on "Amazon" because it was an "exotic and different" place, as he imagined for his Internet company. The Amazon River, he says, is the largest river in the world, and he plans to make his shop the world's largest bookstore. Bezos gave a premium price to start building a brand and told a reporter, "There is nothing about our model that can not be copied over time, but you know, McDonald's is copied, and it's still building a lot, worth billions of dollars. to a brand name Brand name is more important online than in the physical world. "In addition, the name beginning with" A "is preferential because it is likely to happen at the top of the alphabetical list.

After reading the reports about the future of the Internet projecting trade growth of 2,300% annual site, Bezos made a list of 20 products that can be marketed online. He narrowed down the list to what he felt to be the five most promising products, which include: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos finally decided that the new business will sell books online, because of the huge demand worldwide for literature, low price to book, along with many titles are available in print. Amazon was founded in the garage of a rented house Bezos in Bellevue, Washington.

In July 1995, the company began serving as an online bookstore. The first book on Amazon.com is The Concept of Fluid and Creative Analogy Douglas Hofstadter: The Computer Model of the Rationale Mechanism . In the first two months of business, Amazon is sold to 50 states and more than 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales reached $ 20,000/week. Though the largest brick and mortar bookstore may offer 150,000 titles, online bookstores can offer several more times, because online it can have a universal selection of every printed book.

In October 1995, the company announced herself to the public. In 1996, it linked back in Delaware. Amazon issued the initial public offering on May 15, 1997, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol AMZN , at a price of US $ 18.00 per share ($ 1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s an).

Barnes & amp; Noble sued the Amazon on May 12, 1997, stating that Amazon's claim to be "the world's largest bookstore" is false because "... it is not a bookstore at all. It is a book broker." The lawsuit was then settled out of court and Amazon continued to make the same claim. Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, stating that Amazon had stolen Walmart's trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although these demands were also settled out of court, it caused Amazon to impose internal restrictions and reassignment of former Walmart executives.

In 1999, Amazon's first attempt to enter the publishing business by buying a trail of dead, "Weathervane", and published several books "have no clear idea", according to The New Yorker . The trail quickly disappeared again, and in 2014, Amazon representative said that they had never heard of it.

Since June 19, 2000, logotype Amazon has featured a curved arrow leading from A to Z, representing that the company carries every product from A to Z, with arrows shaped like a smile.

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual; it does not expect to make a profit for four to five years. "Slow" This growth is due to shareholders to complain that the company did not achieve profitability fast enough to justify their investment or even survive in the long run. The dot-bubble bubble burst in the early 21st century and destroyed many e-companies in the process, but Amazon survived and moved forward beyond a technology crash to become a major player in online sales. The company eventually turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $ 5 million (for example, 1A Â¢ per share), revenues of more than $ 1 billion. This profit margin, though very simple, proved skeptical that Bezos' conventional business model could work. In 1999, the Time magazine named Bezos Personal Year when it recognized the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

In 2011, Amazon had 30,000 full-time employees in the United States, and at the end of 2016, the 180,000 employees. The company employs 306 800 people worldwide in full and part-time jobs.

On October 11, 2016, Amazon announced plans to build stores and develop curbside pickup location for food. In December 2016, Amazon stores opened Go to Amazon employees in Seattle. store using a variety of cameras and sensors with the help of computer vision to detect items that shoppers grab off the shelf, automatic account replenishment Amazon shoppers when they walk out of the store, eliminating the need for a checkout line. The store is planned to open to the general public in early 2017, but was delayed. On January 22, 2018, Amazon opened its store in Seattle Amazon Go to the general public. Customers scan their Go Amazon app when they enter, and are required to have an Amazon Go app installed on their smartphone and the associated Amazon account to be entered.

In June 2017, Amazon announced that it will acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $ 13.4 billion. The acquisition was seen by media experts as a step to strengthen the physical possession and challenging the supremacy of Walmart as a brick and mortar retailers. The sentiment is heightened by the fact that the announcement coincided with the purchase of a bonobo Walmart men's clothing company. On August 23, 2017, shareholders of Whole Foods, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, approved the deal.

In September 2017, Amazon announced plans to put a second headquarters in metropolitan areas with at least one million people. Cities must submit their presentations on October 19, 2017 for a project called HQ2. The headquarters of the $ 5 billion, starting with 500,000 square feet and eventually expanded to 8 million square feet, may have 50,000 employees.

By 2020, Amazon will build a new Seattle building center with space for Mary Place, a local charity. In May 2018, Amazon announced that it had stopped planning the construction of a new downtown Seattle tower over a proposal to tax the big businessman.

Mergers and acquisitions

Investment

2008 :. Machine Yard Ruby-on-Rails Platform as (PaaS) service company
2010 :. LivingSocial, local deal site
2014: Acquired domain '.buy' at auction for $ 4,588,888
2014: Amazon announces $ 2 billion investment in India
2016: Amazon announces an additional US $ 3 billion investment in India
2017: Between May and July 2017, Amazon has invested INR 2000 crore (US $ 300A million) in India with INR 130 crore (US $ 19A million) invested into Amazon Pay India's payment arm. In November 2017, Amazon invested another INR 2,900 crore (US $ 430A million) in the Indian arm.
2018 :. In January, the additional amount of INR 2000 crore (US $ 300A million) was invested by Amazon in its Indian arm

Child

2003 :. A9.com, a company focused on research and building innovative technology
2004 :. Lab126, an integrated consumer electronics developer like Kindle
2007: Endless.com, the e-commerce brand focuses on shoes. (Discontinued 2012)
2007 :. Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audiobook manufacturer in the US
2009: CreateSpace, self-publishing service for independent content creators, publishers, movie studios, and music labels; created by an internal merger of CustomFlix (on-demand DVD for independent filmmakers) and BookSurge (self-publishing, on-demand printing, online distribution), both initially acquired in 2005.

Amazon has more than 40 subsidiaries, including Zappos, ShopBop, Diapers.com, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Audible, Goodreads, Teachstreet, and IMDb.

board of directors

In May 2018, the board of directors are:

Jeff Bezos, President, CEO, and Chairman
Tom Alberg, Managing partner, Madrona Venture Group
John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at the University of Southern California
Jamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
Daniel P. Huttenlocher, Dean and Vice Provost, Cornell University
Judy McGrath, the former CEO, MTV Networks
Jon Rubinstein, former chairman and chief executive officer, Palm, Inc.
Thomas O. Ryder, former Chairman and CEO, Reader's Digest Association
Patty Stonesifer, President and CEO, Martha Table
Wendell P. Weeks, chairman, president, and CEO, Corning Inc.

Maps Amazon (company)

partnership Merchant

Until June 30, 2006, ToysRUs.com typed into the browser will bring up the tab "Toys & amp; Games" Amazon.com; However, this relationship was discontinued because of a lawsuit. Amazon also host and maintain a website for Borders book stores but this ceased in 2008. From 2001 until August 2011, Amazon's hosted retail web sites for Target.

Amazon.com operate retail websites for Sears Canada, Bebe Stores, Marks & amp; Spencer, Mothercare, and Lacoste. For a growing number of client companies, including British trader, Mark & â€‹â€‹Ã¢ â‚¬ <Ã¢ â‚¬

On October 18, 2011 Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman , Batman , Green Lantern , The Sandman, and Watchmen . This partnership has led to the well-known book stores like Barnes & amp; Noble to remove these titles from their shelves.

In November 2013, Amazon.com announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to start sending orders on Sunday. Services, including the Amazon standard shipping rates, starting in metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York because of the high volume and the inability to provide timely, with plans to expand to Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix in 2014.

In July 2016, Amazon.com announced a partnership with the UK Civil Aviation Authority to test multiple technologies and can use a delivery service via the main air drones in the future.

In June 2017, Nike confirmed a partnership with Amazon, stating that it is at an early stage where they will sell goods on Amazon.

On October 11, 2017, AmazonFresh Booth sells various branded products for home delivery in a particular area.

Products and services

This Amazon.com product line is available on its website including several media (books, DVDs, music CDs, video cassettes and software), clothing, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet foods, groceries, health and personal care items , industry & amp; scientific supplies, kitchen wares, jewelry, watches, lawns and garden items, musical instruments, sports equipment, tools, automotive goods and toys & amp; competition.

Amazon now preparing in India to play a role in the grocery retail sector which aims to meet customer needs.

Amazon.com has a number of products and services available, including:

Subsidiary

Amazon Maritime

Amazon Maritime, Inc. holds the license of the Federal Maritime Commission to operate as a non-ship operator (NVOCC), which allows the company to manage its own shipments from China to the United States.

Audible.com

Audible.com is the seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information and educational programs on the Internet. Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio programs and TV and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its production arm, Audible Studios, Audible also be downloaded audio book producer in the world. On January 31, 2008, Amazon announced it would buy Audible for approximately $ 300 million. The deal closed in March 2008 and became a subsidiary Audible Amazon.

Joyo Century Courier Service Beijing

Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services is a subsidiary of Amazon, and it is applied to freight forwarding license with the US Maritime Commission. Amazon also building out the logistics in truck and air transport has the potential to compete with UPS and FedEx.

Brilliance Audio

Audiobook publisher Brilliance Audio was founded in 1984 by Michael Snodgrass in Grand Haven, Michigan. This company produces 8 first audio title in 1985. The company was bought by Amazon in 2007 for an undisclosed amount. At the time of the acquisition, Brilliance produces 12-15 new titles every month. It operates as an independent company in the Amazon.

In 1984, Brilliance Audio invented a technique to record twice as much on the same tape. The involved technique records on each of the two channels of each stereo path. It has been credited with revolutionizing the emerging audiobook market in the mid-1980s because it makes the unexplained books affordable.

ComiXology

ComiXology is a cloud-based digital comic platform with over 200 million comic downloads in September 2013. It offers a selection of over 40,000 comic books and graphic novels on Android, iOS, Fire OS, and Windows 8 devices and through a web browser. Amazon bought the company in April 2014.

Goodreads

Goodreads is a "social catalog" website that was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler, a software engineer, and entrepreneur, and Elizabeth Chandler. Websites allow individuals to freely search the database, annotations, and book reviews that many Goodreads users collect. Users can register and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own group of suggestions and book discussions. In December 2007, the site has more than 650,000 members and more than 10 million books have been added. Amazon bought the company in March 2013.

Shelfari

Shelfari is a social cataloging site for books. Shelfari users build virtual bookshelves from titles they have or read and they can rate, review, mark and discuss their books. Users can also create groups that other members can follow, create discussions and talk about books, or other topics. Recommendations can be sent to friends on the site to find out what books to read. Amazon purchased the company in August 2008. Shelfari continues to function as an independent social book network in the Amazon until January 2016, when Amazon announced that it would merge Shelfari with Goodreads and close Shelfari.

Twitch

Twitch is a live streaming platform for video, especially oriented to video game content. The service was first established as a spin-off of the streaming public interest service known as Justin.tv. Its prominence was defeated by that of Twitch, and Justin.tv was finally closed by its parent company in August 2014 to focus exclusively on Twitch. Later that month, Twitch was acquired by Amazon for $ 970 million. Through Twitch, Amazon also has the Curse, Inc., the operator of the video gaming community and the VoIP service provider for gaming. Since the acquisition, Twitch began selling games directly through the platform, and began offering special features to Amazon Prime customers.

The rapid growth of sites has been driven primarily by a major esports competition advantage on service, leading GameSpot senior esports editor Rod Breslau has described the service as "ESPN esports". By 2015, this service has more than 1.5 million broadcasters and 100 million viewers every month.

Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market is an American supermarket chain that exclusively features food without artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated fats.

On August 23, 2017, it was reported that the Federal Trade Commission approved the merger between Amazon.com and the Whole Foods Market. The next day it was announced that the deal would close on August 28, 2017.

Junglee

Junglee is a former online shopping service provided by Amazon that allows customers to search for products from online and offline retailers in India. Junglee started as a virtual database that was used to extract information from the internet and send it to a company application. As it progresses, Junglee starts to use database technology to create a single window market on the internet by making every item of each supplier available for purchase. Web buyers can find, compare, and transact millions of products from across the Internet shopping center through a single window.

Amazon acquired Junglee in 1998, and the Junglee.com website was launched in India in February 2012 as a shopping comparison website. It's curated and enabled to search for a variety of products like clothing, electronics, toys, jewelry and video games, among others, in thousands of online and offline sellers. Millions of products can be crawled, where clients choose the price, and then they are directed to the seller. In November 2017, Amazon closed Junglee.com and its previous domains are currently shifting to Amazon India.

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Website

Amazon.com domains attracted at least 615 million visitors annually in 2008. Amazon attracted more than 130 million subscribers to the US website per month by early 2016. The company has also invested heavily in large amounts of capacity server for its website, especially to handle excessive traffic during the December Christmas holiday season.

The results generated by the search engine Amazon partly determined by the cost of sale.

Amazon local storefronts, different in selection and pricing, are distinguished by top-level domains and country codes:

Reviews

Amazon allows users to submit reviews to the web pages of each product. The reviewer should rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon provides a badging option for reviewers showing the original name of the reviewer (based on credit card account confirmation) or indicating that the reviewer is one of the top reviewers based on popularity. Customers can comment or vote on reviews, indicate whether they find reviews that benefit them. If a review is given enough "help", it appears on the front page of the product. In 2010, Amazon was reported as the largest source of consumer reviews of the Internet.

When the publisher asked Bezos why Amazon would publish a negative review, he defended the practice by claiming that Amazon.com "took a different approach... we wanted to make every book available - the good, the bad and the ugly... to let the truth loose ".

There are a few positive review cases written and posted by public relations firms on behalf of their clients and examples of authors using pseudonyms to leave negative reviews of their rival's work.

Content search

"Search within Books" is a feature that allows customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog. This feature started with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003. There are about 300,000 books in the program. Amazon has worked with about 130 publishers to allow users to do this search.

To avoid copyright infringement, Amazon does not restore computer-readable textbooks. Instead, it returns a suitable page image, instructs the web browser to disable printing and places restrictions on the number of pages in a book accessible to a single user. In addition, customers can purchase online access to some of the same books through the "Amazon Upgrade" program.

Third party seller

Amazon gained much of its sales (about 40% in 2008) from third-party vendors selling products on Amazon. Partners receive a commission to refer customers to Amazon by placing links to Amazon on their website if leads generate sales. Worldwide, Amazon has "more than 900,000 members" in its affiliate program. In mid 2014, Amazon's Affiliate Program is used by 1.2% of all websites and it is the second most popular ad network after Google Ads. These are often used by websites and nonprofits to provide a way for supporters to earn commissions from them. Amazon reported more than 1.3 million sellers sold products through the Amazon site in 2007. Unlike eBay, Amazon sellers do not have to maintain separate payment accounts; all payments are handled by Amazon.

Associates can access Amazon catalogs directly on their websites using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. A new affiliate product, aStore, allows Associates to embed a subset of Amazon products on other websites, or linked to other websites. In June 2010, Amazon Sellers Suggestions Product launched (rumored to be called internal "Project Genesis") to provide more transparency to the seller by recommending a special product for third party sellers to sell on Amazon. Suggested products are based on customer browsing history.

Amazon sales rank

Amazon's sales rank (ASR) gives an indication of the popularity of a product sold at every Amazon location. This is a relative popularity indicator that is updated hourly. Effectively, this is the "best seller list" for millions of Amazonian stockpiles. While ASR has no direct effect on the sale of a product, ASR is used by Amazon to determine which product to include in its best-seller list. The products that appear in this list enjoy additional exposure on the Amazon website and this can lead to increased sales. In particular, products that experience large jumps (up or down) in their sales rankings may be included in Amazon's "drivers and builders" list; such a list provides additional exposure that may lead to increased sales. For competitive reasons, Amazon does not release actual sales figures to the public. However, Amazon is now beginning to release point of sale data through the Nielsen BookScan service for verified authors. While ASR has been a source of much speculation by publishers, manufacturers, and marketers, Amazon itself did not release details of its sales ranking calculation algorithms. Some companies have analyzed Amazon's sales data to generate sales estimates based on ASR, although Amazon states:

Please keep in mind that our sales ranking figure is only meant to be a public interest guide for customers and unconfirmed sales information for publishers - we assume you have this information regularly from your distribution sources

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Technology

Amazon runs data centers for online services and has generators or purchases of electricity according to consumption, mostly renewable energy. Amazon contracts with Avangrid to build and operate the first wind farm in North Carolina to power Virginia's Amazon data center. The wind farm was built and started operation in December 2016 despite opposition from President Trump and several North Carolina Republic legislators.

Amazon records data on customer buyer behavior that allows them to offer or recommend to certain items or bundles of goods based on preference indicated through purchases or goods visited.

On May 5, 2014, Amazon announced a partnership with Twitter. Twitter users can link their accounts to the Amazon account and automatically add items to their shopping carts to respond to every tweet with a link Amazon products containing hashtag #AmazonCart. This allows customers to never leave their Twitter feeds and products awaiting them when they go to the website Amazon.

multi-level sales strategy

Amazon uses multi-level e-commerce strategy. Amazon began by focusing on the business-to-consumer relationship between itself and its customers and the business-to-business relationship between itself and its suppliers and then moving to facilitate customer-to-customer with the Amazon market acting as an intermediary to facilitate transactions. This company lets anyone sell almost anything on its platform. In addition to affiliate programs that allow anyone who links post-Amazon and earn commissions for click-through sales, there are now programs that allow the affiliate to build an entire website based on the Amazon platform.

Some other great e-commerce sellers use Amazon to sell their products in addition to selling them through their own websites. Sales are processed through Amazon.com and end up in individual sellers for processing and order fulfillment and Amazon leases space for this retailer. small sellers of secondhand and just go to the Amazon Marketplace to offer goods at a fixed price. Amazon also employs the use of drop shippers or meta sellers. These are members or entities that advertise items on Amazon that order those items directly from other competing websites but usually from other Amazon members. Meta sellers may have millions of products listed, have large transaction numbers and grouped together with other less productive members giving them credibility as only someone who has been in business for a long time. Markup is anywhere from 50% to 100% and sometimes more, this seller maintains that item in inventory when the reverse is true. Amazon increasing their dominance in this drop shipper market has become more and more common in recent years.

In November 2015, Amazon opened its first physical bookshop location. It's named Amazon Books and is located at University Village in Seattle. This store is 5,500 square feet and the price for all products matches the one on its website. Amazon will open its tenth physical bookshop by 2017; media speculation shows Amazon's plan to eventually launch 300 to 400 bookstores across the country. Amazon plans to open brick and mortar bookstores in Germany.

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Revenue

Amazon.com is primarily a retail site with sales revenue model; Amazon takes a fraction of the selling price of each item sold through the website while also allowing the company to advertise their products by paying to be listed as a featured product.

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Controversy

Since its establishment, the company has drawn criticism and controversy from various sources for its actions. These include: luring customers away from brick competitors and mortar sites, poor warehouse conditions for workers; anti-union efforts; Remote content disposal of Amazon Kindle; taking public subsidies; its "1-Click patent" claim; anti-competitive actions; price discrimination; decisions about whether to censor or publish content such as the WikiLeaks website; LGBT book sales rating; and work contains defamation, facilitating air combat, chicken fighting, or pedophilia activity. In December 2011, Amazon faced a reaction from a small business to run a one-day deal to promote the new Price Check app. Buyers using apps to check prices at brick and mortar stores are offered a 5% discount to buy the same items from Amazon. Companies like Groupon, eBay and Taap.it reply to Amazon's promotions by offering a $ 10 discount on their products. The company also faces charges of putting undue pressure on suppliers to maintain and expand its profits. One attempt to blackmail the most vulnerable book publishers is known within the company as Project Gazelle, after Bezos suggests, according to Brad Stone, "that Amazon should approach this little publisher like a cheetah will pursue a sickly deer." In July 2014, the Federal Trade Commission launched a lawsuit against the company stating that it promotes in-app purchases to children, transacted without parental consent.

Selling counterfeit goods

On October 16, 2016, Apple filed a trademark infringement case against Star Mobile LLC LLC to sell Apple counterfeit products to Amazon. In the lawsuit, Apple provided evidence that Amazon sold these fake Apple products and their ads as genuine. Through the purchase, Apple was able to identify that nearly 90% of Apple's accessories sell and are filled with fake Amazon. Amazon sources and sells items without properly determining whether they are genuine. Star mobile LLC LLC settled with Apple for an undisclosed amount on April 27, 2017.

Sales and use tax

The Amazon state sales tax collection policy has changed over the years since the beginning of the company did not collect sales tax. In the US, state and local sales taxes are levied by state and local governments, not at the federal level. In most countries where Amazon operates, sales tax or value added tax applies uniformly across the country, and Amazon is required to collect it from all customers. Proponents force Amazon.com to collect sales taxes - at least in countries where it maintains a physical presence - argues the company holds an anti-competitive advantage over a storefront business being forced to collect sales taxes.

Many US states in the 21st century have passed shopping online sales tax laws designed to force Amazon.com and other ecommerce retailers to collect state and local taxes on sales from customers. Amazon.com originally collected sales taxes only from five countries in 2011, but as of April 2017, Amazon collects sales taxes from customers in all 45 states that have state sales taxes and in Washington, DC

Comments by President Trump

In 2018, President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Amazon's use of the US Postal Service and fixed its shipping rates, stating, "I am right about Amazon harming the US Post Office of large sums of money to become a Delivery Boy," Trump tweeted. "Amazon should pay these (plus) fees and not ask them to pay taxes by the American Taxpayer." Amazon shares fell as much as 6 percent over Trump's comments even though no actual facts were presented in support of President's claim.

Poor working conditions

Amazon has drawn widespread criticism for poor working conditions by both current employees, who call themselves Amazonians, and former employees, as well as the media and politicians. In 2011, it was published that in the Breinigsville, Pennsylvania warehouse, workers had to do the work with 100 Ã‚ Â° C (38 Ã‚ Â° C) heat, which caused employees to be very uncomfortable and suffer from dehydration and collapse. The bay-loading door was not opened to allow fresh air, due to corporate concerns over theft. Amazon's initial response was to pay an ambulance to sit outside to serve an overheated employee. The company finally installed the air conditioner in the warehouse.

Some workers, "pickers," who travel with trolleys and hand-pick scanners "opt for" customer orders can run up to 15 miles during their business day and if they fall behind their targets they can be reprimanded. Mobile scanners provide real-time information to employees about how sooner or later they work; scanners also serve to allow Team Leaders and Area Managers to track employee-specific locations and how many "idle time" they get when they are not working. In a German television broadcast aired in February 2013, journalists Diana LÃƒÆ'Ã‚Â¶bl and Peter Onneken conducted a secret investigation at the Amazon distribution center in the town of Bad Hersfeld in the German state of Hessen. The report highlights the behavior of some security guards, themselves employed by third-party companies, who appear to have Neo-Nazi backgrounds or deliberately wear Neo-Nazi clothing and who intimidate foreign and temporary female workers in central distribution. The third-party security company involved was removed by Amazon as a business contact shortly after the report.

In March 2015, it is reported in The Verge that Amazon will remove the 18-month long non-competing clause of the US employment contract for hourly-paid workers, after criticism that it acted unreasonably in preventing such employees from finding another job. Even short-term temporary workers must sign contracts that prohibit them from working in any company where they will "directly or indirectly" support any good service or that competes with their people assisting support at Amazon, for 18 months after leaving Amazon , even if they are fired or made redundant.

A substantial New York Times article published on August 16, 2015, described workplace evidence of intimidating and confrontational work for corporate office workers.

In an effort to boost employee morale, on November 2, 2015, Amazon announced that it would extend 6 weeks paid leave for new moms and dads. These changes include biological parents and adoptive parents and can be applied together with existing maternity leave and medical leave for new mothers.

Conflicts of interest

In 2013, Amazon earn $ 600 million contract with the CIA, which give rise to conflicts of interest involving the ownership Bezos Washington Post and the paper's coverage of the CIA. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "This is a serious potential conflict of interest for major newspapers such as The Washington Post to have a contractual relationship with the government and the most secret part of the government."

Lobbying

Amazon lobbied the federal government of the United States and state governments on issues such as sales tax enforcement on online sales, transport security, privacy and data protection and intellectual property. According to regulatory filings, Amazon.com focuses lobbying on the United States Congress, Federal Communications Commission, and Federal Reserve. Amazon.com spends about $ 3.5 million, $ 5 million and $ 9.5 million to lobby, in 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Amazon.com is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Board (ALEC) corporate down to membership following a protest at shareholders' meeting on May 24, 2012.

In 2014, Amazon expanded its lobbying practices as it is ready to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration to approve drone delivery programs, employ Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld lobbying firm in June. Amazon and its hobbyists have visited with Federal Aviation Administration officials and flight committees in Washington, D.C. to explain his plan to send the packet.

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