Jeff Bezos Amazon
© David Ryder/Getty ImagesBezos and Amazon have been buying up other major companies in the last few years.


One-click shopping seems to apply to companies, too.


Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday he's dipping his toe into health care, and partnering with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase in the venture.

Health care is the latest field for Bezos, who's spent the last year ascending to become the world's richest man.

In the last five years, the e-commerce power player has also scooped up a number of high-profile companies, from grocery chains to newspapers.

And with Tuesday's news, the question begs what Bezos and Amazon will buy next.

The Washington Post building
© Washington PostThe Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C.
The Washington Post

Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million cash in 2013 from the Graham family, which had roots in the paper since the early 1930s.

The transaction was independent of Amazon, and Bezos owns the 140-year-old newspaper through a holding company.

He was credited with investing in new reporters, securing a new headquarters and taking on the Trump White House. That, in turn, has led President Trump to criticize Bezos, the newspaper and Amazon, which he says skips out on taxes.


Comment: Too bad that 'taking on the Trump White House' has been mostly done with fake news. If the Washington Post keeps operating at that level of journalism, soon Bezos will have to sell it for a song.


Although Bezos has been credited with turning the paper around, some of his staff have criticized him for not paying his staff.

Staff writer Fredrick Kunkle admonished Bezos in a HuffPost op-ed, accusing the owner of butchering retirement benefits and trying to make it easier to remove employees.

"As the owner of an institution that's critical to democracy, he should go out of his way to set a tone of progressive stewardship toward employees in all his businesses," wrote Kunkle, who co-leads the bargaining team for Washington-Baltimore News Guild. "Instead, Bezos has shown that he views his employees as parts in a high-tech machine, that income inequality is someone else's problem, and that modern corporations owe little more to their employees than a paycheck."

Whole Foods

Amazon announced in June 2017 it was buying Whole Foods Market in a deal that came out to $13.7 billion - one of the largest acquisitions in U.S. history.

And it was one of the biggest moves Amazon made since merging with online shoe retailer Zappos in 2009 for nearly $850 million.

The Whole Foods purchase gave Amazon equal footing with brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart when it came to the grocery game.

Whole Foods continues to operate under the same name, but Amazon cut prices on some products at the organic-focused grocery store in November - just ahead of Thanksgiving.

The company also announced Amazon Prime subscribers would get coupons that could be printed and used at Whole Foods.

Amazon already had chopped prices on hundreds of items that August.

Amazon
© Elaine Thompson/APNews of Amazon's planned corporate expansion prompted cities across the nation to enter a bidding frenzy.
Real Estate

Bezos and Amazon whipped up municipal frenzy last year, when the e-commerce behemoth announced it was on the prowl for a second headquarters in the U.S. or Canada.

Amazon said it was willing to spend up to $5 billion to build a new facility somewhere other than its homebase in Seattle.

Cities all over the country bid to win Amazon and the 50,000 high-paying jobs the company promised to bring.

Amazon whittled that down to 20 finalists earlier this month, including New York City, Newark and Philadelphia.

Target?

This year began with a flurry of speculation that Bezos' Amazon would buy Target - one of its main competitors.

"Amazon believes the future of retail is a mix of mostly online and some offline. Target is the ideal offline partner for Amazon for two reasons, shared demographic and manageable but comprehensive store count," tech analyst Gene Munster of Loup Ventures wrote in a post on Jan. 1.

"As for the demographic, Target's focus on mom(s) is central to Amazon's approach to win wallet share."

In the coming days, analysts speculated whether Amazon would ever conduct such a deal, with naysayers buying up Target's stock would be too costly even for Amazon.

But such a theoretical purchase would give Amazon about 2,400 Target stores, CNBC noted at the time.