The Buy Button Is the Most Important Icon on the Internet

Diego Patiño

A simple, effective buy button sounds like a no-brainer today, but building one has proven trickier than you’d think. Up to $4 trillion worth of merchandise will languish unpurchased in online shopping carts this year. No wonder trying to build a frictionless buy button remains a crucial effort in online commerce. Here’s a brief history of the quest for the perfect, profitable click.

September 12, 1997

Amazon applies for a US patent on “a method and system for single-action ordering of items in a client/server environment.” Jeff Bezos is a coinventor.

October 21, 1999

Amazon sues Barnes & Noble over its similar Express Lane buy button. In December B&N is forced by a judge to add extra clicks.

January 31, 2013

Braintree releases Venmo Touch, an iOS-based buy button. (PayPal later acquires Braintree and retools Venmo Touch as One Touch PayPal.)

July 17, 2014

Facebook tests a Buy button for third-party retailers. Access to the data of its 1 billion users means FB can target with precision. Twitter follows suit.

June 30, 2015

Pinterest takes the logical step of offering direct purchases. Shops will eventually be able to pay to promote Buyable Pins, a future source of revenue.

July 15, 2015

Google announces that it’s adding a buy button to mobile search results (the paid ones). Google doesn’t take a cut of sales. What does it get? Data.

September 12, 2017

Amazon’s 1-Click patent will expire.