From Prime to Kindle: 26 Years of Amazon History By Andrew Lisa, Stacker News On 2/18/21 at 8:00 PM EST Nearly 50 cents out of every retail dollar Americans spend online now go to Amazon—the company commanded 47 percent of the retail e-commerce market share in 2020, and that number is expected to reach fully 50 percent in 2021. While the COVID-19 pandemic decimated many retailers big and small, Amazon has thrived, capturing much of the lucrative online and delivery markets, with the company accounting for nearly one-third of all e-commerce sales in the United States in 2020. To handle the surge in online retail and home-delivery demand, Amazon added hundreds of thousands of workers, breaking past the 1 million employee mark in late 2020.