What Amazon Looked Like When It Launched

2015-03-20T23:08:00.000Z

jeff and mackenzie bezos — Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos back in the early days Sara Jaye/Getty Images

When Amazon launched way back in 1995, the company's whole purpose was selling books.

Today, it's a mega-company that sells hundreds of millions of products, makes its own tablets and phones, and plans to deliver packages via drone someday.

Thanks to The Internet Archive, though, we can revisit the early days and see exactly what Amazon used to look like.

First things first... "Amazon" wasn't the company's original name.

Amazon / Village Web Design

Jeff Bezos originally wanted to give the company the magical sounding name "Cadabra."

Amazon's first lawyer, Todd Tarbert, convinced him that the name sounded too similar to "Cadaver," especially over the phone.

Bezos also favored the name "Relentless." If you visit Relentless.com today, guess where it redirects....

He finally chose "Amazon" because he liked that the company would be named after the largest river in the world, hence the company's original logo.

Here's a look at the whole homepage from August 16, 1995:

From that original river design, the company changed its logo quite a few times:

The Internet Archive

In case you forgot, here's the current logo:

Amazon

After 1995, The Internet Archive's first Amazon snapshot comes from 1999. By then, Amazon had already expanded far beyond books. It launched zShops (which eventually became Marketplace, its 3rd-party seller):

...and Auctions, an eBay competitor which flopped:

One of the funniest things about checking out early Amazon.com is seeing what the "Top Sellers" were. Amazon updated this page every Monday.

Amazon also used to have an "e-cards" section that let users send each other animated messages:

The site had daily "Gold Box" deals:

They still exist today, actually, though the "gold box" name isn't as emphasized:

Gold_Box_Deals___Today_s_Deals_ _Amazon_com

The company had a really crowded navigation bar by 2001:

We randomly stumbled upon a site outage in 2000! Back then, Amazon was making about $600 million per quarter, so probably didn't lose too much when the site went down. In 2013, however, a 40 minute outage lost the site $120,000 every minute.

Source.

As the site gained more retail categories throughout 2000 and 2001, it moved its category navigation to the side:

The site got a lighter, bubblier makeover in 2005:

This snapshot from 2006 highlights a very important time in history: When RAZR phones were super popular.

In 2007, Amazon gave its new logo more attention. It also released its first Kindle in November. The device got prime real estate on the site for a long time:

The Internet Archive

Not much changed until 2011, when the company's look got much cleaner with more white space:

That style stayed pretty consistent until the beginning of 2015, when Amazon darkened things up a bit:

Now, meet some of Amazon's earliest employees...

Look at how much Amazon has changed since it first launched

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Look at how much Amazon has changed since it first launched

First things first... "Amazon" wasn't the company's original name.

Here's a look at the whole homepage from August 16, 1995:

From that original river design, the company changed its logo quite a few times:

In case you forgot, here's the current logo:

After 1995, The Internet Archive's first Amazon snapshot comes from 1999. By then, Amazon had already expanded far beyond books. It launched zShops (which eventually became Marketplace, its 3rd-party seller):

...and Auctions, an eBay competitor which flopped:

One of the funniest things about checking out early Amazon.com is seeing what the "Top Sellers" were. Amazon updated this page every Monday.

Amazon also used to have an "e-cards" section that let users send each other animated messages:

The site had daily "Gold Box" deals:

They still exist today, actually, though the "gold box" name isn't as emphasized:

The company had a really crowded navigation bar by 2001:

We randomly stumbled upon a site outage in 2000! Back then, Amazon was making about $600 million per quarter, so probably didn't lose *too* much when the site went down. In 2013, however, a 40 minute outage lost the site $120,000 every minute.

As the site gained more retail categories throughout 2000 and 2001, it moved its category navigation to the side:

The site got a lighter, bubblier makeover in 2005:

This snapshot from 2006 highlights a very important time in history: When RAZR phones were super popular.

In 2007, Amazon gave its new logo more attention. It also released its first Kindle in November. The device got prime real estate on the site for a long time:

Not much changed until 2011, when the company's look got much cleaner with more white space:

That style stayed pretty consistent until the beginning of 2015, when Amazon darkened things up a bit:

Now, meet some of Amazon's earliest employees...

The first 21 Amazon employees: Where are they now?

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

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Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

We randomly stumbled upon a site outage in 2000! Back then, Amazon was making about $600 million per quarter, so probably didn't lose too much when the site went down. In 2013, however, a 40 minute outage lost the site $120,000 every minute.