Amazon 1-Click

Amazon patented a button. The mechanic was simple: store a user's default payment and shipping details, then let them buy anything on the site with a single click, skipping the cart entirely. The typical checkout of 1999 ran five to seven screens; Amazon collapsed it to one. The patent was immediately controversial. Priceline sued. Barnes & Noble built a two-click workaround and got hit with an injunction. Steve Jobs licensed it for the iTunes Store in 2000, reportedly calling it "the simplest possible thing." It held for 17 years.

For anyone building a product, this is a case about the steps in your most important funnel, signup, checkout, activation, and the one with the highest dropout rate. It sharpens what a user is actually required to do at that step, and how much of it could be removed or deferred without breaking the transaction. Why Bezos understood this as math rather than UX taste, and the business insight he was really patenting, is the part the app holds back.