THE LONG READ: How Amazon is hurtling towards world domination

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has cornered online retail, jumped ahead in artificial intelligence with voice activated speaker, Echo, carved out a powerful spot in the media industry and is even dabbling in spaceflight. He may be just getting warmed up, writes Alexander Nazaryan.

THE clouds surrounding Amazon.com are thickening, began the Washington Post article by David Streitfeld on February 21, 2001.

In the previous year, stockholders had suddenly learned that the internet was not immune to the boom-and-bust cycles of more earthbound forms of economic endeavour, and it seemed the Seattle-based bookseller was going to go the way of Pets.com, the most infamous example of late 1990s cyber hubris.