In November 2000, Amazon had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, and 23 million clients worldwide. It opened its digital library with 1,000 ebooks, and the promise of many more titles for soon.
Amazon also began focusing on the French-language market in Canada. It hired staff knowing the language and the market, to be able to offer French-language books, music and films (VHS and DVD) in a Canadian subsidiary. Amazon Canada, the fifth subsidiary of the company, was finally launched in June 2002 with a bilingual (English, French) website.
Surprisingly, even for the marketing of a main online bookstore, paper was not dead. For two consecutive years, in 1999 and 2000, Amazon sent a print catalog to its customers (10 million in 2000) before the holiday season.
2001 marked a turning point for the company, with the need to address the internet bubble affecting the "new" economy and so many companies. Following a deficit for the fourth quarter 2000, Amazon reduced its workforce by 15% in January 2001. 1,300 employees lost their jobs in the U.S. 270 employees lost their jobs in Europe. Jeff Bezos decided to diversify the products sold online, and to sell not only books, videos, CDs and software, but also health care products, toys, electronics, kitchen utensils, and garden tools. In November 2001, cultural products - books, CDs and videos - represented only 58% of sales, the total of which were US $4 billion, with 29 million customers.
The company was beneficiary for the first time in the third quarter 2003.
In October 2003, Amazon launched a full text search (Search
Inside the Book) after scanning the text of 120,000 titles,
with many more to come. It also launched its own search engine,
A9.com.
A sixth subsidiary - named Joyo - opened in China in September 2004.
The net income of Amazon was US $588 million for 2004 - 45% of which from its six subsidiaries (Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, U.K.) -, with a total of $6.9 billion for sales.
Amazon became a reference for global online commerce.
In July 2005, for its 10-year anniversary, Amazon had 9,000 employees, and 41 million clients enjoying attractive prices for a whole range of products they could get within 48 hours in one of the seven countries with an Amazon platform.