last Monday was Amazon for the most valuable company in the world. With a market value of 797 billion dollars, the technology overtook the group from Seattle, its competitors Microsoft, in turn, had displaced only in November, Apple from the top spot.

The market value, market capitalization, called, is calculated by multiplying the number of shares of a company with their rates. He is, above all, a calculated size that is suitable for ranked lists and record messages. No one could sell all of the shares of a company at a stroke at this price. Not even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, he has his 16 percent, which is still in the company. What is sufficient, however, to make it to the Forbes magazine, the richest people in the world.

Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, a year later, it took its business Online, two years later, the stock market followed. Out of the three stock splits, since (to split a share certificate into several fractions), one could have an Amazon share for $ 1.50 to buy. Today the price stands at more than $ 1,600.

This also has to do with Bezos extended its business fields steadily. Initially, Amazon was just the book, shipping, for, the company will be held today sometimes still (The first book sold was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter). However, in 1997, Bezos wrote to his shareholders that it should remain. Soon he was selling CDs, electronic devices, and much more. In 2002 he opened the “marketplace”. Since then, Amazon not only sells their own Goods, but also handles the processing of the order and the number of transactions for other traders. More than half of all Amazon products sold today are traded.

With Prime, Video Amazon became a major provider of video streaming and the main rival of market leader Netflix. Amazon Music is the appropriate range for music. With Alexa, the group is to become the leading provider of speech recognition – the owner of a corresponding device can be ordered on demand at Amazon or at home other networked devices. With the Acquisition of organic supermarket chain Whole Foods in the US, the entry into the food business began two years ago. More surprising, however, is that Amazon is also a major provider of IT-infrastructure. About Amazon Web Services, companies can rent capacity in modern data centers. Everything added together makes Amazon today 178 billion dollars in revenue and three billion dollars in net profit in the year.

This article dates back to the TIME no 03/2019. Here you can read the entire issue.

More than 610.000 employees work for the group, which opened a year ago to move to new headquarters in Seattle. In the center there are three huge glass balls, in which employees, through a kind of Mini-rain forest walk. However, a headquarters alone no longer seems to meet the huge demands. In November, Bezos announced the addition of two additional headquarters building in New York City and one in Arlington at Washington. What the richest man in the world is expected to not only lead the most valuable company in the world, but also the areas with the worldwide largest number of main.