Jason Del Rey, Vox:

In the fall of 2004, Jeff Bezos’s company was still mostly selling just books and DVDs.

That same year, Amazon was under siege from multiple sides. Some of its biggest competitors were brick-and-mortar chains like Best Buy, which was still in expansion mode at the time, with sales growing 17 percent annually.

And:

Amazon was worth $18 billion at the time.

And:

But 15 years later, Amazon is worth more than $900 billion, compared to just $33 billion for its old foe eBay, which spun off its (more valuable) payment division, PayPal. And the Amazon Prime membership program is perhaps the biggest reason why.

This is a fantastic, behind the scenes look at how Amazon Prime came to be, with interviews with people who were part of making it all happen. Great read.