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Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is predicting the death of the mega-online retailer that he founded 30 years ago inside his Seattle, Washington home. Perhaps that’s why there’s now talk of The Walt Disney Company purchasing the company and acquiring its assets, effective July 2025.
Credit: Disney/Amazon/Canva
“Cadabra” Emerges from a Washington State Garage
Whether being incepted inside a garage is a prerequisite for business success, we aren’t sure, but much like its tech sector competitor, Apple, Inc., which was born in the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs’s home at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, in 1976, the Amazon company was born in the garage of a Bellevue, Washington, home in July 1994.
Credit: Jeff Bezos/Credit: Flickr/Daniel Overbaus
But it didn’t start out as Amazon.
Amazon was officially founded on July 5, 1994, by 30-year-old Jeff Bezos, a graduate of Princeton. Amazon’s original name was Cadabra, from the last three syllables of the word abracadabra. But Bezos changed the name to Amazon shortly thereafter because of the former name’s similarity to the word cadaver.
Only one year later, Amazon’s website went live as an online bookseller, and Bezos was already making deliveries to all 50 states and 45 countries around the globe–all from the garage in his Washington State rental home.
Accolades For Amazon
Fortune named Amazon, Inc., among its prestigious list of the World’s Most Admired Companies in 2023, ranking the retail giant second for the seventh consecutive year. In 2024, Amazon earned the #3 spot on the list.
Credit: Amazon
Companies are evaluated and ranked based on nine different criteria before earning such an honor. Criteria include quality of management, innovation in products and services, commitments to social responsibility, people management, quality of products and services, financial soundness, wise use of corporate assets, long-term investment value, and effectiveness in doing business globally.
And Amazon is, indeed, effective in doing business globally. In 2023 alone, more than seven billion parcels were delivered to Amazon Prime Members via Same-Day or Next-Day delivery, and 2024 looks to be an even more remarkable one for Amazon in terms of its delivery prowess.
Credit: Amazon/Canva
According to Doug Herrington, CEO of Amazon Stores Worldwide, in the first quarter of 2024, the mega-retailer quickly surpassed its prior delivery speeds record by successfully placing more than two billion parcels into the eager hands of Prime Members via Same-Day and Next-Day delivery.
In 2024, LinkedIn also named Amazon on its list of top U.S. companies where people want to work for the seventh year in a row and the #1 company where people want to work within the tech sector. The honor is impressive by any standards, but when you consider that Amazon has more than one million employees to keep satisfied, the honor becomes all the more prestigious.
Amazon Founder Forecasts the End For Amazon
But for all its many accolades, Amazon is doomed.
That’s according to Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder. Though he stepped away from his day-to-day role within the company in 2021, he still finds time to comment on business. And though he rarely comments publicly on Amazon’s operations, the final letter he penned to shareholders has recently been circulating online.
Credit: Flickr/Dan Farber
“Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at,” Bezos writes, citing a quote by biologist Richard Dawkins. “How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness?” The 60-year-old founder of aerospace company Blue Horizon and the owner of The Washington Post noted a lack of longevity among companies, saying, “If you look at large companies, their lifespans tend to be 30-plus years, not 100-plus years.”
He tells shareholders that survival in the marketplace will take “continuous effort” and encourages them to “never let the universe smooth you into your surroundings.”
Credit: Disney/Canva
It’s important to note, however, that The Walt Disney Company celebrated its 100th anniversary in October 2023.
A Disney Acquisition of Amazon?
In 2023, many of the world’s headlines that included Disney’s name also included news about prospective buyers of The Walt Disney Company or divisions of the company. Over the course of the year, buyers emerged, poised to purchase ABC Television and other Disney-owned networks, and talk of Disney’s need to sell off ESPN was water cooler fodder around the country.
The poor performance of ESPN even prompted talk of a $1 trillion entity throwing its proverbial hat into the ring for a chance to purchase Walt’s company.
Credit: Becky Burkett/Disney/Walt Disney Archives/Canva
But at the end of the day–and the year–no sale ever came to fruition.
Now, however, an online report suggests that The Walt Disney Company will acquire Amazon, Inc., in July 2025, the transaction for which will be completed in January 2026.
Credit: Disney/Canva
Per the post, Disney CEO Bob Iger shared his positive thoughts about the acquisition, which, as one reads further into the post, is largely related to Amazon MGM Studios. Per the post:
Amazon will continue to remain its headquarters in Seattle while MGM moved from Beverly Hills to Burbank (the main home of Disney since 1940) but its distribution company United Artists Releasing absorbed into Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures with its assists Amazon Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer transferred to the Walt Disney Pictures film studio rather than being an originally announced separated divisions of the Walt Disney Studios like Marvel Studios and 20th Century Studios.
However, the purchase price for the proposed acquisition is listed as $10 million, a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what it cost Amazon to officially acquire MGM Studios in 2022.
Such An Acquisition Is Not At All Likely
A post from NPR, dated March 17, 2022, states that Amazon paid $8.45 billion for MGM Studios, meaning it would be a financial improbability (and a complete disaster for Amazon) for Disney to purchase Amazon MGM Studios for only $10 million.
In fact, the “report” about a potential Disney-Amazon MGM Studios acquisition was posted on a website dedicated to ideas from fans of various companies around the world. This particular post is posted under the heading of “Mergers & Acquisitions, The Walt Disney Company.”
Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm/Pixar/Marvel
Though Disney, under current CEO Bob Iger’s leadership, has enjoyed the fruits of several lucrative acquisitions over the years, including Lucasfilm/Star Wars, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel, and 21st Century Fox, there simply is no indication of any plans for an acquisition of any part of Amazon by The Walt Disney Company at this time.
This post Disney Company Reportedly Set to Acquire Amazon Division in July 2025, Amid Founder’s Grim Prediction appeared first on Disney Dining.
