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Which came first, Amazon or Netflix?

Which came first, Amazon or Netflix?
Amazon
1994 — 3 years before Netflix

Amazon came first, by 3 years. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

Side by side

Amazon Netflix
Year 1994 1997
Date 1994-07-05 1997-08-29
Category technology technology
What happened Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.

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.

Netflix

Netflix was founded in August 1997, a year before Google, and posted DVDs for a decade before streaming launched in January 2007. The famous origin story — Hastings founding it after a $40 late fee on Apollo 13 — has been called a useful myth by co-founder Marc Randolph. Blockbuster declined to buy the company for $50 million in 2000.

Common questions

Which came first, Amazon or Netflix?
Amazon, by 3 years — 1994 against 1997.
When did Amazon start?
1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.
When did Netflix start?
1997. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked