How 30 years of Amazon changed our lives: ‘It made me a millionaire’

It hasn't been all good.

Believe it or not, Amazon is 30 years old today. 

Well, officially the firm is marking the big three oh next year, but on Tuesday, July 5, 1994, in his garage, Jeff Bezos founded the company that would one day make him the world’s richest man. 

Since then, what started as an online bookshop has mushroomed into a tech behemoth that changed the world – not always for the better.

From flagship products and sexy gadgets like Kindles, Firesticks and Alexa-enabled speakers to its distinctly less alluring – but major money-making – cloud computing services and everything in between, it can often feel like the company is everywhere, both figuratively and literally.

On TV, Amazon Prime is one of the world’s leading streaming services, chock-full of content produced by Amazon Studios.

Walk down the street and chances are you’re being watched by a Ring doorbell cam.

Just received a lovely birthday gift? There’s a good chance it was ordered on Amazon, with 90% of UK shoppers turning to its shopping platform – and that was pre-Covid.

Amazon took convenience to a new level, often beating down prices as it went. But it has not been without cost, whether criticism over the treatment of workers in its town-sized warehouses, or the loss of our privacy in return for a grocery shop delivered within the hour.

In the UK and US, most people will have had some dealings with Amazon, whether shopping, watching TV, or without even realising while online. Most will be uneventful, forgetful.

But for some people, not just Mr Bezos, Amazon really has changed their lives. 

The mum whose DIY hack made her a millionaire

Audrey Buck, from Suffolk, began her business in 2002 – but teaming up with Amazon in 2008 proved a gamechanger

I turned a makeshift DIY bin bag hack to help my young children sleep into a £1.3 million business thanks to selling on Amazon. 

With three children, I knew I wanted to be a stay-at-home mum, so I was determined to make a success of my e-commerce business to be close to my kids. 

Back in 2002, my middle child was struggling to sleep during the day which was driving me mad. I confided in friends who were in the same boat.

We’d heard about a DIY blackout blind trick where bin bags are taped to the window to block out the light – it worked a treat, but I knew I needed a more permanent solution, so I started creating my own blackout blinds from scratch. Word quickly spread among my friends and I started making blinds for them too.

It soon snowballed, and in 2002, I officially launched the business, which I’d entirely self-financed. 

But it was when we joined Amazon in 2008 that the business skyrocketed. Without Amazon’s fulfillment network, expanding our overseas presence in Europe and the US wouldn’t have been nearly as seamless or successful. 

Using Fulfillment by Amazon was a game changer, taking the stress of logistics out of my hands and enabling me to focus on the more important aspects of running a business. More importantly, the flexibility meant I could be both a business owner and stay-at-home mum until my kids went to university. 

‘Today, we make 80 to 90% of our sales through Amazon and we wouldn’t be a million-pound business without it.’

The accessibility tech expert who relies on Alexa

Journalist Melissa Parker, a digital native, has watched Amazon’s diverse range of devices and Alexa assistants evolve over the years

I would say the Echo Show has many functions that have improved my life, largely because I can say ‘Alexa’ and a command and it works on everything, from work tasks to finding TV shows. 

More specifically, you can use it to control plugs and turn appliances on and off. I don’t think non-disabled people can fully understand that those little movements can wear you out – every movement costs me more than it would a non-disabled person, so anything that relieves that burden a little is life-altering for me. I want to save energy for the big things.  

I’m also very prone to severe muscle spasms throughout my body, and when that happens unexpectedly, I tend to want silence. I call it my ‘regroup moment’, so the ability to give a simple command like ‘Alexa… turn off this plug’ without having to move is invaluable. 

These are really small things, but I think that’s the magic of accessible tech. It makes life a little more effortless and painless, and often, I don’t give it a thought because I don’t have to. 

Which, in itself, is a remarkably rare thing for a person living in a disabled body.

The privacy expert keeping an eye on Amazon

Jen Caltrider, Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included lead researcher, was wowed when she first used Amazon – but now worries about us swapping data for convenience

I started shopping at Amazon back in 1995 when I ordered my first book online. I thought it was amazing, I could order any book I wanted and it would be sent straight to me. It felt magical at the time. Little did I know how much Amazon would change the world. 

I’m a privacy researcher and consumer advocate, which means that I read privacy policies for a living and call out companies that are bad for privacy. Amazon is among the worst of those companies for many reasons. This is not only because they collect so much of our personal information and use that to sell us lots more stuff.

What truly makes Amazon bad for privacy is, how, over the past 30 years they have incrementally normalised giving up our privacy in return for convenience – they have made the collection of everything we do online commonplace. They’ve normalised mass surveillance with their Ring cameras [footage from which has previously been handed to police], and now they are normalising things like using their AI facial recognition technology to determine our emotions in public spaces [a recent trial used their tech at UK train stations].

We are the proverbial frog slowly getting boiled alive. 

Privacy is good for us as individuals and for us as a society. We need it to be safe, we need it for our mental health, and we need it for our future. 

So, maybe it’s time for people with the power to protect consumer privacy to step up and pass laws and adopt regulations to treat privacy as a human right. That means giving more rights to people than the companies like Amazon that are collecting our data.