Amazon is an American multinational e-commerce company founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It started as an online bookstore and has expanded to sell a wide variety of products including books, clothing, toys, electronics and more. Amazon utilizes customer data from purchase histories to send targeted promotional offers and provides personalized recommendations. The company has also introduced initiatives like Amazon Prime for fast shipping, Amazon Web Services for cloud computing, and Amazon Go stores that utilize artificial intelligence for checkout-free shopping.