From garage to the biggest American shop: Amazon
In 2015, Amazon became the biggest shop in the USA. And you can’t even walk into it.
It makes all of its money through the internet!
It all started in 1994 in Washington State in America. Jeff Bezos read a report about the future of
selling products on the internet. The report said that the number of sales online would quickly grow
by 2,300%! So Bezos created a list of five products that he could sell online: CDs, computers,
computer software, DVDs, and books. He finally decided to sell books because people always
wanted books.
Bezos started the company in his garage! He wanted a name for his company that began with ‘A’
so that it would appear early in alphabetical order on internet searches. He looked through a
dictionary and decided on ‘Amazon’. He chose this because it was ‘exotic and different’ and it was
the biggest river in the world.
In its first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states in the USA and over 45 countries.
In the beginning, it specialised in only one product, books. Now, you can choose from thousands of
products, from electronic technology and clothes to sports equipment and jewellery.

1 Amazon sells all the products on the __________________________.
2 Jeff Bezos got the idea for the online shop from a __________________________.
3 He found the name for his company in a __________________________.
4 At first Amazon sold only __________________________.
5 Amazon sells __________________________ of products now, including jewellery and
sports equipment.