Amazon’s 1994 launch offered “proof of concept” for e-commerce

Exactly 25 years ago today, a company called “Cadabra” (as in Abracadabra) incorporated in Washington State. A few months later it would change its name to Amazon. A quarter-century later, it’s the world’s largest retailer, worth almost a trillion dollars, with side businesses that stretch across industries, while thousands of brick-and-mortar stores have closed around the U.S.