Bezos, Amazon and the Big 3

If you look at the Top 3 American companies according to the Fortune 500 2022 list, then it's Walmart $572.8 billion, Amazon $469.8 billion and Apple $365.8 billion in terms of annual turnover. While Walmart became the first company to cross half a trillion dollars, it is just a matter of time before Amazon claims the top spot. If anyone can get an annual turnover of $1 trillion, then it’s probably going to be Amazon. Interestingly it acquired Whole Foods Market some time back making it an offline retailer too.

When Amazon, an online retailer, got into the cloud services game, a lot of people wondered what was going on. But here AWS (Amazon Web Services) leads the Big 3, the other two being Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Amazon also features in the Top 3 of the streaming world: Netflix, Prime and Disney+. Interestingly AWS powers all three.

The three billionaires who are famous for dabbling in space travel are Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, with his Blue Origin. Bezos has more ambition with satellite Internet and has launched Kuiper Systems.

Amazon is doing great in logistics having fulfilment centers dotted all over along with a record number of planes and trucks. It has acquired Zoox autonomous vehicles.

Alexa was probably one of the first popular AI assistants and it remains to be seen whether they come out with something to counter ChatGPT. It also has the Ring video doorbell which can be integrated with your mobile and the local police network.

While Amazon started off selling books on its website now it boasts of a huge online library of ebooks and the Kindle is a best seller. Other acquisitions are Audible, MGM, Twitch and IMDb.

In terms of user data, Amazon is probably among the three largest companies in the world along with Alphabet and Meta. But unlike the other two, Amazon data is more pointed and real worldly. Amazon knows your exact name, address and buying habits. Based on all of that it can probably build an accurate social and financial profile of you. Their Prime membership is already 200 million plus, the largest club of its kind.

It is said that Bezos wanted to name his company Relentless, an adjective that describes both Bezos and Amazon perfectly. He settled on Amazon, the largest river in the world by volume. The ecommerce site also dispatches the largest total products globally by volume. It also symbolises “A to Z” and it is clear that Bezos wants to do everything.