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AMAZON.COM, INC.
PART I
Item 1. Business
This Annual Report on Form 10-K and the documents incorporated herein by reference contain forward-
looking statements based on expectations, estimates, and projections as of the date of this filing. Actual results
may differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements. See Item 7 of Part II—“Management’s
Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Forward-Looking Statements.”
Amazon.com was incorporated in 1994 in the state of Washington and reincorporated in 1996 in the state of
Delaware. Our principal corporate offices are located in Seattle, Washington. We completed our initial public
offering in May 1997 and our common stock is listed on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol
“AMZN.”
As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc. and its
subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
General
Amazon.com, Inc., a Fortune 500 company, opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995
and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where
customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavor to offer customers the
lowest possible prices.
Amazon.com and its affiliates operate retail websites, including: www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk,
www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.joyo.com. We have organized
our operations into two principal segments: North America and International. The North America segment
includes the operating results of www.amazon.com and www.amazon.ca. The International segment includes the
operating results of www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.fr,www.amazon.co.jp, and
www.joyo.com. In addition, we operate other websites, including www.a9.com and www.alexa.com that enable
search and navigation; www.imdb.com, a comprehensive movie database; and Amazon Mechanical Turk at
www.mturk.com which provides a web service for computers to integrate a network of humans directly into their
processes. The operating results of these websites are included in our North America segment. See Item 8 of Part
II, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data—Note 12—Segment Information.”
Business Strategy
Our business strategy is to relentlessly focus on customer experience by offering our customers low prices,
convenience, and a wide selection of merchandise, to provide e-commerce solutions and services to other
businesses and to offer web services applications to developers.
Price
We endeavor to offer our customers the lowest prices possible through low everyday product pricing and
free shipping offers. We also strive to improve our operating efficiencies so that we can pass along the associated
savings to our customers in the form of lower prices. We enable third-party sellers to offer products on our sites,
in many instances alongside our product selection, and set their own retail prices.
Convenience
Our software engineers, computer scientists, and management team focus on continuous innovation to
provide further convenience for our customers. We work to earn repeat purchases by providing easy-to-use
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