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Two months ago, Amazon halted orders from thousands of suppliers with no explanation. Panic ensued — until the orders quietly resumed weeks later, with Amazon suggesting the pause was part of a campaign to weed out counterfeit products.

Amazon's pledge last month to pump $800 million into making next-day delivery the new standard upped the pressure on its brick-and-mortar rivals to spend more trying to catch up all over again.

Amazon.com on March 9 hinted that fighting counterfeits was a reason for its sudden and unexplained purge of thousands of vendors that sowed panic among longtime suppliers.

Amazon.com abruptly stopped buying products over the past two weeks from many of its wholesale vendors, encouraging them to instead sell their products directly to consumers on Amazon’s marketplace.

Costco Wholesale Corp. may be a latecomer to e-commerce, but consumers love it even more than Amazon.com, according to a customer satisfaction survey released Feb. 26.

Amazon.com Inc.’s sales and earnings in the busy holiday quarter beat analysts’ estimates, showing the world’s biggest web retailer can maintain rapid growth while improving profitability and fending off online competition from rivals such as Walmart Inc.

Shoppers will spend an estimated $7.8 billion on Cyber Monday, Nov. 26 — a record — boosting a strong holiday shopping season, and Wall Street likely will shrug it off.

Amazon.com Inc. will build new offices in New York City and Arlington, Va., ending months of jockeying between potential locations across the country vying for a $5 billion investment that promises 50,000 high-paying jobs over almost two decades.

Amazon.com Inc., locked in a margin-crushing price war, is offloading costs onto suppliers and limiting the number of single, low-priced items shoppers can purchase in an effort to offset rising shipping costs.

Years of investments in warehouses and robots and data centers and gadgets — that have often tested investor patience — paid off big for Amazon over the holidays.