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by dpacmittal 2129 days ago
Did online shop software even exist when Amazon started?
1 comments

I was going to say "yes!" but then I looked it up that Amazon actually launched before Ebay as a business. I don't remember actually using Amazon personally until the 2000s but they've been around since 1994, almost a year before Ebay. I'm struggling to think of any earlier online retailers who would have been building ecommerce software.
Especially in the early days, the main competitors to online retail were catalogue services. I would think they have most business and logistics problems in common, minus running a web site.
The Internet Shopping Network launched before Amazon, but I doubt they wouldn't probably have considered licensing any of their platform.