Amazon. com was one of the first companies to try to sell products on the Internet. Jeff Bezos started the company. He was a successful vice—president of a company in New York. One day he predicted the future. He thought，"The World Wide Web is growing 200 percent a year. It's going to continue to grow. Shopping is going to move to the Internet. People are going to shop online. "He gave up his good job and drove across the country to Seattle，Washington. There he started an online bookstore called Amazon. com. Bezos had very little money. The company began in a garage，and at first there were very few people who bought things.
At the Amazon. com site，people can search for a book about a subject，find many different books about that subject，read what other people think about the books，order them by credit card，then get them in the mail in two days. This kind of bookstore was a new idea，but the business grew. In a few years，Amazon. com had 10 million different things in categories including books，CDs，toys，electronics，videos，DVDs，things you use to fix up a house，software，and video games. Today you can buy anything from food to gold rings at a"virtual shopping mall"，that is，a group of stores all over the world that works like group of stores all in one place.
Are people going to shop online more and more? No one knows for sure. At least online shopping is growing.
