When Jeff Bezos foundedAmazonin July 1994 , it was n’t yet Amazon . Its original name was Cadabra — a nod to the classic magic wordAbracadabra .
According to Brad Stone ’s bookThe Everything Store : Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon , Bezos was n’t married to the moniker , and his lawyer Todd Tarbert gave him two compelling reason to scrap it . For one , people just might not get the reference . Cadabraalso sound a lot likecadaverwhen spoken , specially over the earpiece .
So , asInsider theme , the beginner and his then - married woman MacKenzie Bezos ( now MacKenzie Scott ) dream up alternatives and register some of the most promising domain names , including Awake.com , Browse.com , and Relentless.com . They did n’t relinquish the domains once they bring on Amazon : To this day , if you typecast any of those three entanglement address into your search bar , you ’ll be redirect to the Amazon web site . ( They also register Bookmall.com , but it ’ll only give you an erroneousness message.Bookmall.co.za , on the other hand , will take you to a South African bookselling site . )
Other possibilities were more or less more esoteric — like MakeItSo.com , an earliest hint from Bezos ’s colleague Jeff Holden that wasinspired by the catchphraseofStar Trek’sCaptain Jean - Luc Picard . And Aard.com , from the Dutch give-and-take forearth(aarde ) , which would all but undertake that Bezos ’s party would ride atop any alphabetically arranged list .
Needless to say , Bezos ended up locate on a differentAword . He get acrossAmazonwhile perusing the dictionary and like the theme of key his next retail heavyweight after such a stupendous consistency of water .
“ This is not only the largest river in the world , it ’s many times large than the next biggest river . It blows all other river away , ” he said , grant to Stone .
[ h / tInsider ]
