> I think a lot of us forget that Amazon wasn't the only big e-tailer in the late 90s, it's just the one that survived. There were lots and lots of bigger and s

> I think a lot of us forget that Amazon wasn't the only big e-tailer in the late 90s, it's just the one that survived. There were lots and lots of bigger and smaller places that straight up went out of business after the .com crash, but Amazon, despite taking a massive beating, survived. It's my opinion that The Dot Com Crash is what created Amazon. Here's how: I worked in Redmond Washington during the crash, and there were thousands of people who lost their jobs due to that. I knew so many people who were struggling to find work. This was Y2K, when Seattle wasn't the tech powerhouse it is today. T-Mobile didn't exist, Google hadn't opened any offices in Washington, and tech companies were failing left and right. I think that the crash gave Amazon an opportunity to hire people. There was a lot of talented people out of work. Arguably, this may also explain why T-Mobile has become so huge. I worked there before they were T-Mobile, and I can remember how tiny we were. You could fit our entire operations team into a conference room. Nowadays, T-Mobile is HUGE and I think a lot of that may be a combination of geography and timing. In 2003, Sprint was bigger than T-Mobile, but they're based in Kansas and the Seattle area just has a much larger pool of engineers to support a company like that.