In a press release issued on July 22, 2009, Amazon.com announced they had reached an agreement to acquire Zappos.com.

According to the press release, Amazon intends to purchase the online shoe retailer for approximately 10 million share of Amazon common stock and $40 million in cash for an estimated purchase price of almost $850 million.

Jeff Bezos, Found and CEO of Amazon.com said, “We see great opportunities for both companies to learn from each other and create even better experiences for our customers.”

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, added, “We will continue to build the Zappos brand and culture in our own unique way, and we believe Amazon is the best partner to help us do this over the long term.” He further explained the sale/merger to employees in a CEO letter sent to employees by email and posted on their blog.

About Amazon

Amazon.com, Inc., a Fortune 500 company, is based in Seattle and opened for business on the Web in July of 1995. It has become the World’s largest online retailer.

About Zappos

Zappos.com was established in 1999 and quickly became popular and currently stocks millions of products.