The Year in Review: Amazon

Chances are you at least browsed Amazon's website for gifts this holiday season, and you may have even been gifted something from the company's warehouse.

Amazon is a one-stop-shop for everything from tablets to toys, offering hundreds of thousands of products on a single website. But just how big is the online retail giant?

According to E-commerce experts 500 Friends, Amazon is expected to grow 23 percent this year, with $9,823 pouring in every five seconds, or $117,882 per minute. In total, Amazon is forecast to earn $62 billion in revenue this year. The company's monthly visitors — 80 million people — could fill 24 Malls of America, or 60 Disneylands.

Amazon kept busy over the past year, expanding operations into a number of new countries, beefing up its catalog of streaming content, and launching a new lineup of Kindle devices. The company has found success in the tablet space, nabbing more than half of the Android tablet market in the U.S. earlier this year.

But all the good hasn't come without some controversy. Being the world's largest online retailer makes Amazon a target for online miscreants aiming to break into the company's systems and steal data. Amazon also faced criticism in 2012 from environmentalists, who claim the company failed to invest in renewable electricity for its facilities.

Let's take a look back at some of the most important Amazon-related stories that made headlines this year.

What's new?
Although Amazon is best known as an online retailer, the company over the past few years has also become a player in the consumer electronics space with its Kindle e-reader and tablet devices. Early in the year, rumors began surfacing about new version of the Kindle Fire tablet.

Amazon left techies in suspense until September, when it unveiled a new Kindle Fire lineup, including a revamped version of the original tablet, as well as 7-inch and 8.9-inch versions of the new Kindle Fire HD. Also on the docket was a new touch-based, frontlit Kindle known as Paperwhite.

The Internet giant dropped the price of its original, 7-inch Kindle Fire to $159 and gave it an upgraded processor that is 20 percent faster than its predecessor, as well as double the RAM for 40 percent faster performance and longer battery life.

But it wasn't all good news for Kindle devices this year. Several large retailers, includingWalmart and Target, pulled the Amazon gadget from its store shelves.

Which Amazon Kindle Is Right for You?

Amazon doesn't seem to be reeling over the loss of its old retail partners, however. The company this fall geared up for a busy holiday shopping season by hiring 50,000 seasonal employees at its U.S. fulfillment centers.

When Cyber Monday rolled around, Amazon excited deal hunters by slashing the price of its $159 Kindle Fire to $129. The deal resulted in the "biggest day ever" for Kindle salesworldwide, the company said.

Beyond its many consumer electronics and retail endeavors, Amazon has also been working to establish itself as a player in the video-streaming space with its Prime service, which offers free two-day shipping on all purchases plus unlimited streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows for $79 per year.  In February, the Web giant teamed up with Viacomto expand Prime Instant Video catalog with streaming access to TV Shows from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT, and Logo.

Since then, Amazon has further bolstered the service through licensing deals with Epix, NBC, MGM Studios, and Paramount, among others. The Prime Instant Video catalog now features more than 30,000 movies and TV episodes that members can stream to compatible devices like the Kindle Fire HD , iPad, Roku, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii U.

If you were under the impression that Amazon is just a U.S. phenomenon, think again. The Seattle-based company this year has been working hard to expand its business to other countries, beginning with the launch of a Spanish-language Kindle eBook store in April. Amazon then further expanded its Kindle store to India in August, and Brazil in December.

The Amazon Appstore for Android also expanded this year to the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Also, November marked Amazon's first push into Asia, when the company began selling its Kindle devices and opened its Appstore for Android in Japan.

With Success Comes Controversy
But being the world's largest online retailer doesn't come without some controversy, and 2012 brought several issues for Amazon.

The company actually started the year on a sour note, when hackers broke into its Zappos online store and made away with the personal information of as many as 24 million customers. In response to the security breach, Zappos reset all user passwords and advising its customers to create new ones.

Amazon was unsurprisingly hit with a class-action lawsuit just days after the incident. Victims claimed the hack put them at greater risk for identity theft and phishing scams.

It was more bad news for the company over the summer when electrical storms blasted the East Coast, pulling the plug on some of Amazon's servers in Northern Virginia and leading to issues with what Amazon refers to as its Elastic Compute Cloud, Relational Database Service, and Elastic Beanstalk. The Web services blackout took down several popular Internet firms like Instagram and Netflix for a period. Amazon apologized for the outage and pledged to make changes to avoid a recurrence.

That wasn't the only environmental issue Amazon faced. A recent Greenpeace report that studied the environmental impact of the cloud criticized Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter for lagging behind their Web counterparts.

Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft "are all rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds," Greenpeace said in its report, dubbed "How Clean Is Your Cloud?"

Amazon challenged the report, calling it inaccurate and saying the company "believes that cloud computing is inherently more environmentally friendly than traditional computing."

What's to Come?
With a hand in e-commerce, streaming video, consumer electronics, and cloud services, one would think Amazon has enough on its plate. But the company will undoubtedly continue to expand, offering even more products and services in the future.

Following the lead of streaming rivals Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, Amazon is looking tobegin developing its own original TV series for its Prime streaming video service. Amazon Studios in May began soliciting ideas for comedy and children's programming, which will be offered via Amazon Instant Video. Amazon's series development will be led by Joe Lewis, previously with 20th Century Fox and Comedy Central, and Tara Sorensen, formerly with National Geographic Kids.

Besides original content, Amazon is also reportedly looking to get into the smartphone market. Rumors of an Amazon-branded smartphone first emerged late last year, when Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney said that an Amazon handset would launched in 2012's fourth quarter, based on a supply chain check in Asia. The phone, he said, was being developed by Amazon and Foxconn International Holdings.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9

Rumors of an Amazon phone heated up over the summer when a report from The Wall Street Journal claimed Amazon was testing the gadget, which measures between four and five inches. Then in late November, rumors swirled that Foxconn had received orders from Amazon to manufacture phones that would presumably compete with the likes of Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy S III.

Amazon, of course, has not made any announcements, so it appears a launch this year is unlikely.

With such a bustling business, Amazon is eventually going to need more space, and the company is reportedly looking to its home town of Seattle for that. The Seattle Timesreported earlier this year that the company has been buying up real estate across three blocks in the city.

Amazon is reportedly planning to build a giant new campus comprised of three towers, each with 1 million square feet of space. Each tower will reportedly occupy its own block.

Amazon may also take a move out of Apple's playbook and open a brick-and-mortar store in Seattle. Citing "sources close to the situation," GoodEReader said earlier this year that the purported Amazon retail store will have a more limited selection and offer books through Amazon Exclusives, as well as Amazon's line of Kindle devices.

Are Amazon brick-and-mortar stores and company-branded smartphones on the docket for 2013? We'll just have to wait and see.

For more from Angela, follow her on Twitter @amoscaritolo.

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