What Did Amazon Do This Week? 26/04/20
ROUGH WEEK THIS WEEK, NEXT WEEK ROUGHER…
This week was a bad and busy one for Amazon with a new competitor from, of all places, Facebook who ploughed in $6 billion into India's 'Jio'. A massive planned sickout looming and the company is, yet again, accused of copying popular products. Aside from all this, France is still very much a thorn in the side of Amazon after losing a court battle which is forcing the company to protect its workers before the company can sell more goods (quels salauds!). If Amazon doesn't do that, the company could be fined $100,000 per non-essential item delivered. Oh, and Trump said the postal service should go for Amazon's legs more or no loan. Nice. Rays of sunshine for Amazon? The stock price is still causing analysts to change their graphs as it climbs higher and higher. Earnings come out Thursday next week...expect some fireworks.
SO WHAT?
- Amazon is still doing pretty well, all things considered, but as infection rates soar in the US, Amazon has a problem that is getting larger. As the company continues to hire and ramp up protecting its workers, the clock is ticking around the world. Amazon needs to keep delivering or public opinion may wane and then the company has lost that.
Jony Cota won $1m in the much-lauded Amazon fashion show 'Making The Cut'.
'Upload' (sci-fi original content) is getting mixed reviews.
Arianna Huffington has partnered with Audible.
The Jonas Brothers have released their documentary with Amazon.
Amazon has bought a £250m space to build a studio in Kent, UK (...with Netflix).
5% of SXSW films have opted in to be shown on Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon Keyspaces is now generally available
Amazon's challenge to the JEDI contract is officially on hold until August 2020.
Amazon's Augmented Artificial Intelligence (A2I) is now generally available.
Leaked pictures show Amazon's Ring may eventually be used to scan number plates and much more.
AWS announced AppFlow, a new integration service simplifies and automates private, bidirectional data flows between AWS services and SaaS applications like Salesforce.
AWS has expanded further in South Africa.
Facebook has partnered with AWS on PyTorch 1.5, a deep learning framework.
Amazon donated to a cause that supports independent booksellers.
More of employees test positive for COVID-19 across America putting more distribution hubs at risk.
Amazon India now allows local stores to sell groceries online.
Amazon is looking for 5,000 more delivery people across the UK.
Amazon is looking to start a 'within hours' ultra-fast fresh food delivery service.
Amazon has expanded the hourly wage hike until May 16th for workers.
Amazon is asking workers who are sick at home to take leave or come back to work.
Whole Foods is using a heat map to track their staff who are at risk of unionising.
Amazon workers are staging a sickout this week.
Amnesty International has called on Amazon to improve working conditions.
Amazon is spending $10m to plant trees and capture carbon.
Amazon (and others) boosted their lobbying budgets in early 2020 before pandemic hit.
Amazon Marketplace ran a second COVID-19 webinar.
Amazon has created a COVID-19 help page for Sellers across Europe.
Consumers in California, US are using Amazon for price gouging.
Amazon received £258 million in tax credits last year despite making £32 billion revenue.
Amazon is leading lobbying spend this year with people like Facebook.
Facebook's $6 billion investment in India's Jio puts it in competition with Amazon. [Bloomberg]
Is Amazon copying popular products? It sure looks that way. [Motley Fool]
Amazon is being heavy handed with Sellers...according to Sellers. [Digiday]
Quebec is urging the population not to buy from Amazon. [Bloomberg]
Amazon may have misled Congress per judiciary chair. [Bloomberg]
Amazon is set to become a video games juggernaut. [Seeking Alpha]