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The combined value of all three acquisitions was around $55 million.Īs an Amazon company for more than 15 years, you would think that IMDb would show more obvious signs of its parent company. Though no dollar figure was ever revealed for the IMDb acquisition, Amazon actually bought two other companies at the same time - U.K.-based Bookpages and Germany’s Telebook, local online bookstores in their respective countries. Amazon would use IMDb data to help build one of the Internet’s biggest stores.” He painted a very clear vision of how IMDb would exist with Amazon as a separate brand. “Maybe a licensing deal, or an outright acquisition. “Jeff explained Amazon was primarily a bookseller, but would be moving from books to other things, such as video, and he was looking for a site to partner with,” explained Needham. The best way (forward) was to invest and incorporate, and when we incorporated, we hired like-minded people who were equally passionate.” The Amazon eraīefore Amazon acquired IMDb in 1998, Needham met up with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in London to discuss a potential tie-up.
Imdb database software#
“I combined my twin passions, film and technology, and launched an online downloadable software on USENET - in those very early days, everyone was a volunteer, passionate about film and TV,” said Needham.
Imdb database tv#
Today, IMDb claims more than 200 million unique monthly visitors across the Web and mobile, with over 180 million “data items,” three million movies, TV programs, and six million cast and crew members.
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There aren’t many recognizable brands still on the Web from before 1994, but IMDb is one of them - the service graduated onto the Web via Cardiff University’s (Wales) servers in 1993, before finally arriving at as a fully incorporated company just in time for the Oscars in 1996. Its shift from a volunteer-led USENET group into a company and online encyclopedic force was an evolution that took almost six years. This was actually before the World Wide Web was a thing - it wasn’t until August 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee launched the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.
Imdb database movie#
U.K.-based film buff Needham rose to the challenge, and posted a set of text files (shell scripts) to help plant the seed that would lead to the creation of a searchable database of movie data. Similarly, typing in a film name would give a list of all the actors/actresses who were in that film. Indeed, it was in October 1990 when someone on a USENET group asked:ĭoes anyone out there have a Unix or C program which can ‘interrogate’ the actor/actress files? What I want to be able to do is to type in an actor/actress’ name and get out a list of all the films which they appeared in.
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