Since its humble beginnings as an online bookseller, Amazon has become a household name — synonymous with endless product choices and same-day shipping, all sustained by a vast logistics network that spans continents.

Amazon — which now has more than ninety fulfillment, redistribution, and sorting centers in the US — began opening warehouses in Europe in 1999. Five years later, it moved into Asia, establishing centers in Japan and China, and now India — bringing its total number of warehouses to more than two hundred.

What’s peculiar about Amazon is that the company’s enormous size isn’t matched by huge profits. So far it has dumped most of its surplus into building facilities, creating product lines, and developing new technologies.