A number of little-known facts surrounding Amazon's rise as an ecommerce powerhouse are explored in a new book called The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Businessweek senior writer Brad Stone, released on Tuesday.
Among the revelations in the book we find out that the original name for Amazon was not only completely different in tone and theme, but that the name still exists as a redirect to Amazon.com to this day.
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In chapter two of the book, Stone describes the early formation of the company, during which founder and CEO Bezos and his wife struggled to come up with the right name.
Stone writes:
Bezos and his wife grew fond of another possibility: Relentless.com. Friends suggested that it sounded a bit sinister. But something about it must have captivated Bezos: he registered the URL in September of 1994, and he kept it. Type Relentless.com into the Web today and it take to you to Amazon.
Indeed, if you perform a whois search on the domain name, Amazon Technologies, Inc. is listed the owner of the domain that has been registered since 1994. And as Stone indicates, typing the URL into your browser redirects you to the front page of Amazon.com.
On some level, it indicates that Bezos never completely got over the name, even nearly 20 years after he embarked on his path making Amazon the leading ecommerce platform on the web.
"Relentless" is also how the book portrays Bezos, offering an inside glimpse at the temperament and management style of the CEO more widely known for his over-the-top laugh and enthusiasm.
An excerpt from the book, which appeared on Tuesday on the Businessweek website, includes several quotes from Bezos related to the writer by Amazon insiders, including:
“Are you trying to take credit for something you had nothing to do with?”
“Do I need to go down and get the certificate that says I’m CEO of the company to get you to stop challenging me on this?”
“Are you lazy or just incompetent?”
Although the book isn’t always flattering, it does appear to offer fresh insight into Bezos' management style, which pushed Amazon to accomplish what so many other ecommerce ventures could not — staying power.
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