$1,000,000,000,000.
On Tuesday, a rise in the share price of Amazon, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the U.S., briefly took it above the trillion-dollar watermark for the first time.Amazon's monopoly, as I've written about previously on a number of occasions, is already having devastating consequences on brick-and-mortar retail spaces, which means fewer service jobs in an economy increasingly driven by service work.
Achieving the valuation marks the latest chapter in an astonishing story of growth for the company, founded by businessman Jeff Bezos in Seattle in 1994.
Less than 25 years later, Amazon has garnered a major presence in everything from retail, to groceries, to video streaming, helping it rack up revenues of $178bn (£139bn) last year.
Bezos has become the world's richest man in the process, with a net worth estimated at more than $167bn on Tuesday, according to Forbes.
Boutique online retail spaces are being forced out of business altogether, or obliged to participate in the Amazon marketplace in order to try to survive.
And it's very difficult — more so with each passing day — for consumers to not participate in the Amazon marketplace, especially if one lives in a place with few brick-and-mortar retail options and/or is dependent on online shopping because of mobility issues.
This is the difference between capitalism and unregulated capitalism. It's not a small one. To the contrary, it's enormous.
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