CNN Special Report
Original airdate: August 16, 2019
It’s hard to tell just one story about the first 25 years of Amazon. Amazon disrupted the retail industry by making online shopping fast and convenient, and it’s now taking on traditional retailers with its own brands. It ushered in a new era of IT, by developing cloud computing in 2006, getting a years-long head start on its competitors.
Now the company is by far the most dominant player in an industry that controls a fundamental part of the world’s digital infrastructure. Amazon also is a shipping company, an advertiser, a television producer, a grocery store. The list goes on. Then there’s the company’s iconic but often enigmatic founder, Jeff Bezos, who has become the richest person on Earth but has his sights set on outer space. The story of Amazon is all of those things and more, a saga explored in CNN’s documentary “The Age of Amazon,” presented by Poppy Harlow.
