From Welcome to Amazon.com!
to Hello, sign in

The browser tab says Welcome to Amazon.com!, and the page prints the date like a newspaper: Tuesday, December 1, 1998. Four tabs run along the top, Books, Music, Video and Gifts. Music had opened that June with more than 125,000 titles,² and the page announces the newest: Our Video & DVD store is now open!¹

This is the oldest homepage in our set, but the shop is older. Amazon opened for business as a bookstore in July 1995.¹ That November, by Amazon's own timeline, the website moved to a new office, in the back seat of the chief programmer's Honda. It was down for just 20 minutes.¹

The rest reads like a magazine. Under What We're Reading an editor reviews Jim Harrison's novel The Road Home. A cookbook, How to Cook Everything, is to practical cooking what Dr. Spock's book was to child care. There is a Gift of the Day (Wow! Mega Bloks Gyro Fighter!), the National Book Award winners, and an Amazon.com Hot 100, Updated hourly! In the left column, two lines for visitors from abroad: Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Visit Amazon.de and Speak English the proper way? Visit Amazon.co.uk. Keep that German line in mind.

The footer has a link called 1-Click Settings. 1-Click ordering had been introduced in September 1997.¹ It is still in the footer years later, next to a link that sounds like a constitution: Your Bill of Rights.

Just above them sits an offer to other websites: Build a Store on Your Web Site! Become an Amazon.com Associate. By Amazon's own timeline, the first site to sign up, in 1996, was a dog site called Pure-bred PuppyNet.¹

By November 1999 the browser tab has a slogan: Amazon.com--Earth's Biggest Selection. It stays there until 2003. The page greets you with Hello!, a word it still uses, and promises that Shopping at Amazon.com is 100% secure-- guaranteed.

The tabs now include Electronics, Toys & Games, Auctions, zShops and Free e-Cards. Auctions had opened that March, e-Cards in April, and zShops in September, enabling anyone to offer merchandise for sale at Amazon.com.¹ There's even a Search of the Day: Byzantine. The hot books are Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Chamber of Secrets; the hot toy, a Pokémon starter set.

In January 2000 the logo changed: Customers smile. New logo smiles back.¹ It was designed by the studio Turner Duckworth.³ The June 2000 page lists seventeen stores, from Lawn & Patio to sothebys.amazon.com, and a box called Movers & Shakers that lists the products climbing fastest in sales rank:

One offer on the page is only for people who have never bought anything there. Under the headline Cents and Sensibility, first-time customers can pick from a selection of bestselling books for just a penny each (limit two per customer), and Quantities are limited, so don't delay! Two bestsellers for two cents, as long as it's your first order.

In June 2001 the page lists 22 stores, including Cars, In Theaters and Outdoor Living. The main story isn't a product at all: Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire Opens Today! Get Showtimes. Amazon.com also listed cinema showtimes. Other experiments appear in the list of services over the next years: Restaurants (Beta) in 2002, and in June 2004, in an election year, Presidential Candidates.

The 2003 page introduces two things Amazon still uses: Your Gold Box of daily deals and FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. It also has a joke at the very end of the page, a list of cheap essentials called Bottom of the Page Deals:

Amazon.com now offers bargains on brand-name essentials, all priced so low they've sunk to the bottom of the page!amazon.com, June 2003

The browser tab changes again in 2004, to the plain Amazon.com: Welcome. New stores carry a label, (Beta - What is this?): Beauty, Gourmet Food, Sports & Outdoors.

Amazon Prime launched on February 2, 2005: For a flat membership fee of $79 per year, members get unlimited, express two-day shipping for free.⁴ In June it has a box on the homepage, Join Amazon Prime, with a detail that's easy to forget: Share these benefits with up to four family members in your household. Free two-day shipping covers over a million eligible items sold by Amazon.com.

The browser tab changes again, and this time it isn't written for people. It's a list of keywords: Amazon.com: Online shopping for electronics, apparel, music, books, DVDs & more. With small edits, and one short break in 2014, that title stays until 2021.

One more line in the 2005 menu has a history. In September 1995, two months after opening, Amazon had a listing in the Seattle Yellow Pages under "bookstores". Customers kept calling to order by phone, so Amazon didn't renew it.¹ Ten years later the homepage has a store of its own called Yellow Pages.

By June 2006 the menu needs a summary, See All 34 Product Categories, and a store called Amazon Shorts sells digital short-form literature. The footer, small print as always, reads © 1995-2005, in the middle of 2006.

On November 19, 2007, the day Kindle went on sale for $399,⁵ the middle of the homepage became a letter. Dear Customers, I love slipping into a comfortable chair for a long read. A few lines down: The booklover in me often has asked the nerd in me, "Is there a way to get the emotions and experiences I love from books, but combined with the possibilities of advanced technology?"

The first Kindles sold out in five and a half hours, according to Amazon's 2007 letter to shareholders.⁶

The same capture has a new header, with an orange Shop All Departments menu down the left side instead of tabs, and a note at the top that would stay for years: a version of the site optimized for screen readers and mobile devices at www.amazon.com/access.

The page starts showing its math. In 2008 a box asks What Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item? and answers in percentages: 87% buy the item you viewed, 7% buy this alternative, 2% buy this alternative. In 2010 Kindle is back on top, as #1 Bestselling Product on Amazon.

The 2010 page also gets a new footer: Get to Know Us, Make Money with Us, Let Us Help You, and under them a list of the other sites Amazon runs, each with a one-line description: Audible Download Audio Books, IMDb Movies, Films & Actors, Zappos Shoes & Clothing. The headings are the same in 2026.

On September 28, 2011 there's a second letter, for the Kindle Fire.⁷ It opens with one of Bezos's best-known lines:

There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp.amazon.com, September 2011

The menu next to it already sells the cloud: Amazon Cloud Drive, 5 GB of free storage, 17 million songs, play anywhere.

In 2012 the logo drops the ".com", and the menu lists the whole Kindle range with prices, from the $79 Kindle to the $379 Kindle DX. The 2013 page is the wordiest in our set, 1,660 words, and brings back an idea from 1998: Best Sellers … Updated hourly.

Amazon announced Echo on November 6, 2014, at first by invitation only.⁸ By that evening it's the top of the homepage, Introducing amazon echo, above a Countdown to Black Friday. Below that sits a row of personal recommendations.

On July 15, 2015, Amazon's 20th birthday, the first Prime Day ran for 24 hours in nine countries.⁹ The whole homepage is confetti and cardboard-box robots: Happy Prime Day. More deals than Black Friday. A year earlier Black Friday was the thing to count down to. Now it's the thing to beat.

The header turns dark in 2016. In 2017 a new link appears in it: Disability Customer Support. In 2018 the menu has a Treasure Truck, and the footer list gains Whole Foods Market, America's Healthiest Grocery Store; Amazon had bought the chain the summer before.¹⁰

Dogs again. When Prime Day 2018 opened that July, some shoppers got no deals at all. They saw only the dogs Amazon shows on its error pages.¹³ We have no capture of it.

In 2019 the footer list reaches its longest in our captures, 43 sites and services, and adds PillPack, Pharmacy Simplified.

The 2019 page is the one most people would recognize: a grid of cards. Its top banner is a sentence to a speaker, Alexa, call Dad., for Father's Day. In June 2020 the top of the page reads Black lives matter. What we're doing: blog.aboutamazon.com, and next to the logo, a new prompt: Hello, Select your address.

In 2022 the browser tab finally loses its keyword list. It now says Amazon.com. Spend less. Smile more. Here are all the titles in our captures:

Remember the German line from 1998? The April 2023 capture was made by a crawler the site placed in Germany. The top of the page says Deliver to Germany, and a banner adds: You can also shop on Amazon Germany for millions of products with fast local delivery. In 1998 the homepage asked Sprechen Sie Deutsch?; in 2023 it already knows. In 2024 and 2025 the crawler was in Sanfrancisco 94102, and on New Year's Day 2026, in Nashville 37217.

This is the homepage on January 1, 2026. A row of luxury handbags (15% off pre-loved pieces: Chanel, Van Cleef, Hermès, Fendi), Shop Saks on Amazon, device deals, a Zappos winter sale. Nothing on it is written by an editor and nothing tells you what Amazon sells. In 1998 the page told you: Books, Music, Video, Gifts.

Put the first and the last page side by side. Drag the handle to rewind.

DEC 1998 · four tabs2026 · a grid of cards

In 1998 the homepage told you what Amazon sold. Today it asks where to deliver it.amazon.com, 1998 → 2026