15 companies you might not know are owned by Amazon (and one that got dumped for a huge loss)

AbeBooks, known as a specialty bookstore, is able to procure backlist and out-of-print titles. And it's also owned by Amazon.

If you've ever spent time commuting, you know what a treasure audio books can be. Audible got its start way back in 1995. In 2008, it got gobbled up by the house that CEO Jeff Bezos built.

For decades, Box Office Mojo tracked movie success using powerful algorithmic-driven systems. In 2008, almost a decade after its founding, Box Office Mojo became part of Amazon.

If you love comics, you probably love ComiXology. It's a top distribution platform for digital versions of your favorite paper-based comics. And it's owned by Amazon.

I grew to know and love Curse because of how well it managed my World of Warcraft mods. Today, it's way more than mods, and way more than WoW. It's also now part of the Amazon empire.

Clicking on Diapers.com will now take you straight to Amazon's main site. Five years after founding, Amazon acquired Quidsi, the site's parent company. It got merged into Amazon when the separate business proved unprofitable. Poopers!

If you're in the market for a camera, you've probably spent some time on DPReview.com. Even though there's absolutely no mention on the homepage, DPReview is part of Amazon and has been since 2010.

Originally founded in 1993 as Phoenix Textiles Group, Fabric.com was one of Amazon's big surge of 2008 acquisitions. Although the About page mentions Amazon, there's no mention of the company on the Fabric homepage.

Hugely popular among book nerds, Goodreads stayed independent for six years before it was acquired by Amazon in 2013. Although you can sign in with your Amazon account, nothing on the homepage mentions Amazon.

How many family arguments has this site settled? Certainly, for my wife and me, it's been the go-to site for many disagreements (although, sadly, I often lose). It's also an Amazon-owned business.

A successful book distribution company in Europe, The Book Depository is known for free book delivery to 100 countries. Acquisition by Amazon appears to have left that intact.

You might not think watching other people play video games would be fun. You'd be wrong. Twitch.tv is zooming up on YouTube for video views... and it's owned by Amazon.

Woot! Woot! Woot! Weird little deals, available for a short time. Some good, some bad. Now, it's all Amazon's.

Zappos has a great return policy. I know this because my wife bought a pile of shoes for me, and then she returned them until she found a pair that fit. Known for great customer service, the company is an Amazon business now.

Amazon put more than half a billion bucks into Drugstore.com. By the time it fire-saled it to Walgreens, that was worth just about $50 million. Oops. Apparently, Amazon couldn't print money for everything.