It's Amazon's world. We just live in it.

Amazon.com isn't America's biggest company. By market cap, it trails Apple. Measured
by number of employees, it's behind Walmart. By revenues, it's a distant eighth on the
Fortune 500 list. But measured by importance to modern life and ability to shape the
American economy in its own image, Amazon is second to none.
Part of Amazon's remarkable influence stems from the sheer variety of its business lines
and the way it touches our everyday lives. Born in 1994 as a modest online bookseller,
Amazon has grown organically and by accretion into an internet giant that plays in nearly
every sector, from producing movies to transporting freight.
It has a full suite of electronic devices, including a digital assistant that thousands of
consumers rely on to perform daily tasks (Alexa), an electronic reader (Kindle) and a
home security system (Ring). Its server business hosts a third of the world's cloud-based
data. After deflating brick- and-mortar retail, it's become a brick-and-mortar retailer itself
with its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods, its physical bookstores, and its foray
into cashierless convenience stores. Now, it's trying to become the place where you can
find a handyman and fill your prescriptions, maybe even buy home insurance and get a
loan.
All of that growth has helped make the man behind Amazon, CEO and founder Jeff
Bezos, the world's richest person, with a net worth of $160.2 billion, according to Forbes
- although that goes up or down with the company's stock price each day.
Welcome to the United States of Amazon.
In the upcoming weeks, CNN Business will examine the many ways Amazon has
permeated the American economy – from the benefits it brings to the risks its vast
influence poses.
After all, most consumers delight in the ability to get the world delivered to their doorstep
in as little as two days (with 5% cash back on an Amazon credit card to boot). The Prime
membership is the price of admission to a new level of convenience, cost savings and
choice, from discounts in the grocery aisle to instant access to award-winning movies and
television shows.
"The number one thing that has made us successful, by far, is obsessive- compulsive
focus on the customer as opposed to obsession over the competitor," said Bezos, at an
Economic Club of Washington dinner in September.
But there's a downside when one company has that much leverage. The company's
enormous workforce and economic influence mean it has the power to squeeze wages
and even warp the political process, as evidenced by the billions of dollars in tax breaks
Amazon has already received for its fulfillment centers and the goodies currently in the
offing for its second headquarters.