---
title: "Which came first, Amazon or Java?"
description: "Amazon vs Java: Amazon came first, by one year — 1994 against 1995. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/amazon-vs-java/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Amazon or Java?

**Which came first, Amazon or Java?: Amazon**

1994 — one year before Java

Amazon came first, by one year. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

## Side by side

|  | Amazon | Java |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1994 | 1995 |
| Date | 1994-07-05 | 1995-05-23 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. | Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. |

## Amazon

Amazon was incorporated on 5 July 1994, originally as Cadabra, and the website opened in July 1995 selling only books. The 1994 incorporation date is used here because it is the company's own founding date; if you mean the shop, 1995 is the answer. Either way it predates Google by three or four years and eBay by about a year.

## Java

Java was announced in May 1995, having started in 1991 as a project called Oak aimed at interactive television — a market that did not exist yet. Its promise was "write once, run anywhere", achieved by compiling to bytecode for a virtual machine rather than to a specific processor. JavaScript arrived seven months later and was named after it purely as a marketing decision; the two languages are unrelated.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Amazon or Java?

Amazon, by one year — 1994 against 1995.

### When did Amazon start?

1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

### When did Java start?

1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

## Related pages

- [Apple or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-java/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-java/)
- [email or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-java/)
- [Java or Microsoft?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-microsoft/)
- [Java or the Macintosh?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-macintosh/)
- [Java or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-windows/)
- [Java or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [Java or Python?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-python/)
- [Java or JavaScript?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-javascript/)
- [Java or Netflix?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-netflix/)
- [Java or Wikipedia?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-wikipedia/)
- [Java or YouTube?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-youtube/)

## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]