Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (/ˈæməzɒn/ or /ˈæməzən/), often referred to as simply Amazon, is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the world by total sales and market capitalization.^[14] Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, later diversifying to sell DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3downloads/streaming, audiobook downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics—notably, Amazon Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and Fire TV—and is the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services (IaaS).^[15] Amazon also sells certain low-end products like USB cables under its in-house brand AmazonBasics.

Amazon has separate retail websites for the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico. Amazon also offers international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products.^[16] In 2016, Dutch and Polish language versions of the German Amazon website were launched.^[17][18]

In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization,^[19] and is, as of 2016 Q3, the fourth most valuable public company

The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called his "regret minimization framework," which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the Internet business boom during that time.^[21] In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-president of D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle. He began to work on a business plan for what would eventually become Amazon.com.

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra" on July 5, 1994.^[12] Bezos changed the name to Amazon a year later after a lawyer misheard its original name as "cadaver".^[22] In September 1994, Bezos purchased the URL Relentless.com and briefly considered naming his online store Relentless, but friends told him the name sounded a bit sinister. The domain is still owned by Bezos and still redirects to the retailer.^[23][24] The company went online as Amazon.com in 1995.^[25]

Bezos selected the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary, and settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" just as he planned for his store to be; the Amazon river, he noted was by far the "biggest" river in the world, and he planned to make his store the biggest in the world.^[25] Bezos placed a premium on his head start in building a brand, telling a reporter, "There's nothing about our model that can't be copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it still built a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand names are more important online than they are in the physical world."^[26] Additionally, a name beginning with "A" was preferential due to the probability it would occur at the top of any list that was alphabetized.

Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Chinese: 阿里巴巴集团控股有限公司) is a Chinese e-commerce company that provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals. It also provides electronic payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. The group began in 1999 when Jack Ma founded the website Alibaba.com, a business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. In 2012, two of Alibaba's portals handled 1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in sales.^[3] Suppliers from other countries are supported (with more stringent checks than for Chinese companies),^[4] but the company primarily operates in the People's Republic of China (PRC). At closing time on the date of its initial public offering (IPO), 19 September 2014, Alibaba's market value was US$231 billion.^[5] However, the stock has traded down and market cap was about $212 billion at the end of December 2015.

In September 2013, the company sought an IPO in the United States after a deal could not be reached with Hong Kong regulators.^[6] Planning occurred over 12 months before the company's market debut in September 2014, with Reuters Instrument Code "BABA.N". The pricing of the IPO initially raised US$21.8 billion,^[5][7] which later increased to US$25 billion, making it the largest IPO in history.^[8] Buyers were actually purchasing shares in a Cayman Islands shell corporation, not in the Alibaba group, as China forbids foreign ownership of its companies.^[9]

Alibaba's consumer-to-consumer portal Taobao, similar to eBay.com, features nearly a billion products and is one of the 20 most-visited websites globally. The Group's websites accounted for over 60% of the parcels delivered in China by March 2013,^[3] and 80% of the nation's online sales by September 2014.^[5] Alipay, an online payment escrow service, accounts for roughly half of all online payment transactions within China.^[10]

Alibaba is planning to enter India and was in talks with Snapdeal in September 2014.^[11]

Alibaba reported sales of $14.32 billion on China's Singles' Day on 11 November 2015, up 60 percent from 2014.^[12][13] It is the world's largest retailer as of April 2016.^[14] Alibaba entered India's e-commerce space with 25% stake in Paytm owner One97.^[15]

One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said, "Do you know about Alibaba?" And she said yes. I said, "What do you know about?", and she said, "Open Sesame". And I said, "Yes, this is the name!" Then I went on to the street and found 30 people and asked them, "Do you know Alibaba?" People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China … they all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba – open sesame. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So … easy to spell, and globally known. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name "Alimama", in case someone wants to marry us!

Calvin comments

Amazon came from the Long River in South America called the Amazon

Alibaba came from the "Story of Alibaba and the forty thieves" (Story of the 1,000 Arabian Nights)

OPEN SESAME!

DOORS HAVE BEEN OPENED WIDE FOR ALIBABA THROUGHOUT CHINA

NOW OPEN SESAME FOR JACKMA

JACKMA WILL BE COMING TO MALAYSIA IN MARCH TO LAUNCH ECOMMERCE FREE TRADE ZONE

OPEN SESAME FOR

POS

FOR DRB AS DRB OWNS 53.5% OF POS