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Two decades after Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com Inc. in his Bellevue, Wash., garage, his e-commerce juggernaut could be forgiven for letting up on its rapid growth.

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Questions in the industry still abound as to whether retailers will be able to support a thriving web operation without putting a serious dent in the profits and sales of their bricks and mortar stores.

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Not Amazon, though, which steamrolled through 2015, capturing an ever-growing share of U.S. retail sales. Of every additional US$1 Americans spent for items online this year, Amazon captured 51 US cents, according to a recent estimate by analysts at Macquarie Research.

And of the expected US$94-billion growth in all retail sales this year — both in stores and online — Amazon took a staggering US$22 billion, or almost a quarter, Ben Schachter, a retail analyst at Macquarie calculated.

And this year’s holiday shopping season served to solidify the notion that the Internet is increasingly Bezos’ world and the rest of us are just shopping in it.