, describing these cost-cutting measures as a way to refocus on areas that generate"meaningful returns."
In the 25 years I've been at Amazon, there has been constant change, much of which we've initiated ourselves. When I joined Amazon in 1997, we had booked $15M in revenue in 1996, were a books-only retailer, did not have a third-party marketplace, and only shipped to addresses in the US.
A critical challenge we've continued to tackle is the rising cost to serve in our Stores fulfillment network —and . Despite growing 29% year-over-year in 2022 on a $62B revenue base, AWS faces short-term headwinds right now as companies are being more cautious in spending given the challenging, current macroeconomic conditions. While some companies might obsess over how they could extract as much money from customers as possible in these tight times, it's neither what customers want nor best for customers in the long term, so we're taking a different tack.
. Akin to physical retailers' advertising businesses selling shelf space, end-caps, and placement in their circulars, our sponsored products and brands offerings have been an integral part of the Amazon shopping experience for more than a decade. However, unlike physical retailers, Amazon can tailor these sponsored products to be relevant to what customers are searching for given what we know about shopping behaviors and our very deep investment in machine learning algorithms.