Amazon’s First Beta Test

Source: Wall Street Journal & YouTube video of Jeff B Published: October 2011

Source: Wall Street Journal & YouTube video of Jeff B
Published: October 2011

Amazon’s First Beta Test

Circulated: February 04, 2020

At launch, the Amazon.com site wasn’t even truly finished. The philosophy was to get to market quickly and to fix problems and improve the site as people started using it.

The first beta test for Amazon.com was performed in April 1995. Among the bugs discovered is that it’s possible to order a negative quantity of books; the system would try to credit the customers’ card!

Jonathan Leblang discovered and reported the bug in 1995. Leblang joined as an Amazonian four years later, and today he works as the Director of Product - Alexa for Business.