Amazon has owned IMDb since April 1998. Amazon’s 1998 annual report shows it bought three companies that month, IMDb and two online booksellers in the UK and Germany, for about $55 million in total including related charges, paid with about 3.2 million Amazon shares and cash. IMDb’s own price, and its revenue today, have never been disclosed.
Correction (10 Oct 2026): the roughly $55 million often quoted as IMDb’s price was the combined cost of three companies Amazon bought in April 1998, according to its 1998 10-K. Amazon has never disclosed IMDb’s own price. Earlier undated figures on this page have been removed.
How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q, prospectus and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number; outside estimates appear only labelled, with their source and date. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
IMDb is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon. Amazon’s 1998 annual report lists ‘Internet Movie Database Limited’ among its subsidiaries, 100% owned, and its acquisitions note explains how it got there: in April 1998 Amazon acquired all the shares of three internet companies in the UK and Germany, for an aggregate purchase price, plus related charges, of about $55 million, paid in Amazon common stock (about 3.2 million shares) and cash (Amazon 10-K for 1998).
The other two companies were online booksellers that Amazon relaunched in October 1998 as Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. Amazon has never said how much of the $55 million was for IMDb.
In 1998 Amazon was a bookstore buying a movie database for a slice of a $55 million deal. The logic was data and traffic: IMDb was one of the most visited entertainment sites on the web and gave Amazon a path into selling videos. Over time it became something more strategic, a source of entertainment data and an advertising surface inside a company that now runs Prime Video and one of the largest ad businesses in the world.
What to watch
IMDb’s role in Prime Video and Amazon’s advertising products
Whether Amazon ever reports IMDb on its own (it does not today)
Frequently asked questions
Who owns IMDb?
Amazon has owned IMDb since April 1998; Amazon’s filings list it as a 100%-owned subsidiary.
Amazon did not disclose IMDb’s own price. Its 1998 10-K says it bought three companies, IMDb and two online booksellers, for about $55 million in total, mostly in stock.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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