Bezos, Jeffrey Preston

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Jeffrey Preston Bezos (bā´zōs), 1964– American business executive and on-line retailing pioneer, b. Albuquerque, N.M., grad. Princeton (B.S.E., 1986). He worked in computer technology for several financial firms before founding (1994) Amazon.com, of which he is chairman and CEO. Headquartered in Seattle, Amazon.com grew from an Internet bookseller into an online emporium and the world's largest Internet retailer, selling a wide variety of merchandise that is shipped from warehouses throughout the world; it also acts as a storefront for smaller retail businesses. The company has developed e-book readers (first introduced in 2007) and also offers cloud computing services. Bezos also founded (2000) Blue Origin, a company devoted to rocket development and space tourism, with an emphasis on reusable rockets that take off and land vertically. In 2013 Bezos bought the Washington Post newspaper.

See B. Stone, The Everything Store (2013).