How Amazon Became One of Washington’s Most Powerful Players

When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com Inc more than two decades ago, he sought to keep the online bookstore away from the government’s reach. He has said he looked into placing its headquarters on an Indian reservation as a tax-saving strategy. That was then. Today, Amazon, whose revenues in 2017 topped $177 billion, has become deeply entwined with the federal government. Bezos has built one of the largest lobbying operations in Washington, bigger than those of powerhouses such as Exxon Mobile and Walmart. Its cloud-computing business is a major government contractor, with an estimated $1.5 billion in contracts in 2017. And the company has been pushing hard to change the law to allow government employees to buy more of their own supplies on Amazon.com. With three Washington-area locations among the 20 finalists for its planned second headquarters, Amazon could become a big part of the capital region’s social fabric.