What Did Amazon Do This Week?
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ABRIDGED VERSION DUE TO TRAVEL
Normal service resumes next week.
A slow week for Amazon, characterised by, you guessed it, lawsuits and allegations of impropriety. One from The British Independent Retailers Association (£1.1B lawsuit against Amazon for allegedly misusing members' proprietary data for competitive purposes) and another from an ex-AWS worker says Amazon breached UK sanctions by providing Russian company VisionLabs with its facial recognition tech after Russia's Ukraine invasion. Both are not good looks, but are unlikely to stop Amazon doing anything immediately. More ammunition for regulators though…
Technology featured heavily; Amazon released details on Project PI, which is active in several warehouses and uses computer vision to detect if products are damaged or don't meet buyers' criteria, and Amazon's robotaxi unit Zoox announced plans to start testing its autonomous vehicles this summer in Austin and Miami. In content news, Amazon bought Indian streaming service MX for an absolute song.
SO WHAT?
Amazon continues to slowly start spending again. Technology bets and investments continue to help the company learn lessons today for a smarter, more efficient business (read: warehouses and delivery services) tomorrow. If you have two hands and touch cardboard, your days are increasingly numbered.
Subscribe now to read the +80 other stories that Amazon got up to last week ↓
Amazon MGM Studios appointed Lauren Anderson as head of brand and content innovation. /DTV
Amazon and Allen Media Group completed a channel deal. /Variety
Amazon MGM acquired the documentary 'Hollywood Ending'. /Deadline
Prime Video has ordered a ‘Young Sherlock’ series. /Deadline
Amazon has greenlit the 'We Were Liars' book for a series . /Deadline
Amazon have ordered a marching band drama titled ‘Generation’. /THR
Amazon ordered an animated comedy from Aubrey Plaza. /THR
Twitch terminated all members of its Safety Advisory Council. /CNBC
NOTE: WDADTW does not feature: ‘in talks’ info, director/cast updates, or monthly content roundups for Amazon and MGM content.
AWS announced 37 updates this week. /Amazon
Amazon Bedrock now has access to Anthropic’s “tool use” for Claude, letting users create AI assistants. /Verge
AWS announced a partnership with SAP. /Amazon
Amazon Fire’s TV search received poor reviews. /Verge
Amazon’s Ring is changing focus. /Bloomberg
Amazon Connect now supports Apple Messages for Business. /AWS
Alexa voice commands will cease working on July 1st unless their developers build a new custom skill. /Verge
AWS announced plans to offer cloud computing in Morocco and Senegal. /Reuters
Amazon is in talks with Italy to invest billions of euros in cloud plan. /Reuters
Amazon Bedrock announced a new Converse API. /Amazon
Amazon's Prime Air program was approved by the FAA to fly drones beyond a pilot's line of sight, letting Amazon expand its delivery area in College Station, Texas. /Bloomberg
Amazon added Grubhub ordering to its app. /Axios
Amazon tightened a policy that requires sellers to obtain insurance and expanded its A-to-Z Guarantee to cover customers against defective products in cases of property damage or personal injury. /ECB
Amazon launched a Kiehl’s store in the Amazon Premium Beauty store. /Retail Dive
Amazon abandons Amazon Fresh delivery across 5 UK cities. /Grocery Gazette
Amazon made Business Prime Duo free for Prime Members. /Yahoo!
Amazon wants to build more data centres in Chile, amid a drought expected to last until 2040. /RestofWorld
Jeff Bezos’s Earth Fund boosted funding to $100 million for livestock alternatives. /Bloomberg
A militant group released two videos of an Amazon cloud engineer held hostage in Gaza since October 7. /BI
Amazon must face bias claims by Black worker placed on improvement plan. /Reuters
Amazon’s third sustainability accelerator launched. /ChannelX
Amazon to close Tukwila (Seattle, US) warehouse, impacting hundreds of workers. /KIRO7
A US judge rejected Amazon bid to get FTC lawsuit over Prime program tossed. /Reuters
Andy Jassy gave an interview for the Amazon blog. /Amazon
Amazon will no longer use Atlas Air. /FreightWaves
Jeff Bezos sold 1.1 Million Amazon shares to fund Day 1 Academies. /Bloomberg
A woman was killed outside of an Amazon warehouse. /WTVR
Amazon settled the Bakersfield employee case. /KGET
Amazon (and other big tech companies) lobby group opposes India's EU-like antitrust proposal. /Reuters
Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta account for 30% of the S&P 500 Index, up from ~26% at the start of the year, after a surge driven by Nvidia. /Bloomberg
Amazon’s first rivals, booksellers across America, want to have their complaints heard in the Federal Trade Commission case. /Bloomberg
How Shein and Temu, which are spending billions on digital ads and offering steep discounts or free products, have become big threats to Amazon in the US. /BigInformation
Walmart+ Week sale is set for June 17-23 (ahead of Amazon Prime Day). /Axios
Here’s a historical list of all the Amazon fee increases. /SmartScout
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