---
title: "Which came first, Amazon or Microsoft?"
description: "Amazon vs Microsoft: Microsoft came first, by 19 years — 1975 against 1994. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/amazon-vs-microsoft/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Amazon or Microsoft?

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

1975 — 19 years before Amazon

Microsoft came first, by 19 years. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

## Side by side

|  | Amazon | Microsoft |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1994 | 1975 |
| Date | 1994-07-05 | 1975-04-04 |
| Category | technology | company |
| What happened | Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. | Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque. |

## 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.

## Microsoft

Microsoft was founded in April 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — a product they had demonstrated before writing all of it. It predates Apple by almost exactly one year. The hyphen was dropped in 1976 and the company moved to Washington state in 1979.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Amazon or Microsoft?

Microsoft, by 19 years — 1975 against 1994.

### When did Amazon start?

1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

### When did Microsoft start?

1975. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

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## Sources

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