There was a time not that long ago when the first thing people thought of when they heard the word "Amazon" was a rainforest or a river, not a website. But the juggernaut that began as an online bookseller in 1994 is now one of the most successful companies in history, with $11.59 billion USD in earnings in 2019. But founder Jeff Bezos hasn't forgotten his beginnings. As proof, when you finish this article, take a quick visit to www.relentless.com. You'll find yourself on the Amazon home page.
Relentless.com was one of the first names Bezos came up with for his startup, so he registered the domain name in 1994 and still keeps the link active. According to Brad Stone, who wrote The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon in 2013, Bezos might have decided against the domain name on the advice of those around him. "Friends suggested [Relentless] sounded a bit sinister," he wrote. "But something about it must have captivated Bezos."
For the record, Bezos settled on Amazon after searching through the first pages of a dictionary and settling on the word that described the world's largest river by volume. After all, he was about to sell a lot of volumes himself.
Amazing Amazon:
- Collectively, Amazon's warehouses have more square footage than 700 Madison Square Gardens.
- Bezos' first sale on his website was the book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter.
- The lobby of Amazon's corporate offices in Seattle contains a cave bear skeleton from the Ice Age, which Bezos bought for $40,000 USD.