This Day in History: <br />Amazon Opens for Business July 16, 1995 The brainchild of <br />founder Jeff Bezos, the <br />online retail behemoth began <br />simply as an online bookseller. Named after the Amazon River, <br />Amazon.com was billed as <br />"Earth's biggest bookstore." The company took off immediately, <br />accruing $15.7 million in revenues <br />by the end of 1996. In 1997, Bezos hand-delivered <br />the company's one-millionth <br />order to a customer in Japan. Amazon would eventually <br />become the most valuable <br />retailer in the world. In 2017, Jeff Bezos was named <br />the richest man in the world, <br />and Amazon became a $1 trillion <br />company in 2018.
