Amazon.com Has Also Taken Stakes in Companies Like Rivian and YES Network

Amazon.com is a $2 trillion Goliath of a company that competes in e-commerce, cloud computing and a host of other industries.

Like most monstrously sized companies, Amazon.com has acquired a number of different companies along the way to help maintain growth.

After going public in the middle of 1997, Amazon.com made its first three acquisitions in April of 1998.

Bookpages, Telebook and IMDB were purchased for $55 million, in what was a combination of cash and stock. IMDB remains one of the most popular websites in the world to this day.

As their stock soared in the late 1990s, Amazon.com dished out more money for the likes of Junglee, PlanetAll, LiveBid.com, Accept.com and Alexa Internet. The cheapest of these transactions was Accept.com, which cost Amazon a little over $100 million, while the most expensive transaction was LiveBid.com, which cost $300 million.

There were a few smaller transactions completed by Amazon in the late 1990s, and then disaster struck - the Internet bubble popped, taking Amazon's share price with it.

Over the next few years, Amazon would become very picky about potential acquisitions, as they were more focused on improving their core business.

Just two small transactions - Egghead Software and OurHouse.com - were completed by Amazon between 2000 and the summer of 2004.

In August of 2004, Amazon completed its first major purchase in a while, as they acquired Joyo.com for $75 million.

The purchases kept coming in 2005, as Amazon would buy companies like BookSurge, Mobipocket and CustomFlix.

In January of 2008, Amazon completed an important acquisition, as they purchased Audible.com for $300 million. The audio book service is still an important part of Amazon.com to this day.

In the fall of 2009, Amazon completed their largest ever acquisition, after they purchased the popular online retailer Zappos for $1.2 billion.

In the 2010s, Amazon completed a number of acquisitions that bolstered their forays into robotics, cloud computing services and more. This included purchases such as Kiva Systems and Amiato, to name a few.

In 2014, Amazon.com purchased Twitch Interactive for nearly $1 billion. The online streaming platform has had its share of ups and downs, though it remains a powerhouse in the streaming space.

In 2017, Amazon completed its largest acquisition ever, as the company purchased Whole Foods Market for nearly $14 billion. Amazon had a vision of transforming the grocery space forever, though things haven't quite worked out as hoped.

A number of purchases were completed after that in order to bolster Amazon.com's cloud computing and services offerings, including Sqrrl, CloudEndure and E8 Storage. AWS is an integral part of the Amazon.com business, and Amazon started focusing more on purchases in the cloud computing sector at this point.

In 2021, Amazon completed a major acquisition in order to bolster their content offerings, as they purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $8.45 billion. This gave Amazon a pile of valuable IP in the entertainment space, which was used to bolster their Amazon Prime offerings.

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Amazon has also taken stakes in various companies over the years, including the YES Network (sports) and Rivian (EV), to name a few.

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Amazon will have difficulty pursuing any reasonably-sized deals going forward, as they have become such a big company.

The FTC has taken a dim view of any transaction involving the world's largest companies, including Amazon and Microsoft.

Filed under: General Knowledge