An anonymous reader quotes a report from Protocol: Add Amazon to the long list of companies looking to build a more immersive future: The ecommerce giant has been looking to hire a number of people for an unannounced AR/VR product in recent months. Among the roles Amazon is looking to fill are a wide variety of senior positions for computer vision scientists, designers, program managers, product managers, researchers and technologists, suggesting that the company is looking to build out a substantive team. "You will develop an advanced XR research concept into a magical and useful new-to-world consumer product," one of the job listings reads, using the industry shorthand for extended reality, which can encompass both AR and VR. Another job listing describes the initiative related to "XR/AR devices," and states that eventual hires will be part of "a greenfield development effort" that will include "developing code for early prototypes through mass production."

Amazon is looking to hire a UX designer to work on "the core system interface along with end-user applications spanning from multi-modal interfaces to 3D AR entertainment experiences," and suggest that applicants should have the ability to "think spatially, with 3D design experience in motion design, animation [and] AR/VR, games," among other things. Applicants for a senior product manager position are told they should have "experience building deeply technical products, e.g. AI/ML, robotics, games." [...] Interestingly, a number of the job listings describe the project as related to a "magical and useful, new-to-world XR consumer product," suggesting it may be looking to establish a new product category. Others even describe it as a "a new-to-world smart-home product."

Amazon appears to have rowed back from a public threat to end support for Visa payments in the UK in a dispute over payment fees. From a report: The ecommerce giant sent an email to users of Amazon.co.uk today informing them that the "expected change" -- which was due to take place on January 19 -- will not now take place on that day. Although it is still not clear if the two companies have come to sustained terms on fees. "The expected change regarding the use of Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk will no longer take place on January 19. We are working closely with Visa on a potential solution that will enable customers to continue using their Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk," Amazon writes in the email sent to UK users. "Should we make any changes related to Visa credit cards, we will give you advance notice," it goes on, adding: "Until then, you can continue to use Visa credit cards, debit cards, Mastercard, American Express, and Eurocard as you do today."

Amazon is touting a major milestone for Fire TV, claiming it has sold more than 150 million of the streaming devices worldwide. And it announced deals with Ford Motor Co and Stellantis to bring Fire TV to the automakers' in-car entertainment systems. From a report: For comparison, Roku reported 56.4 million active streaming accounts across its family of devices as of the end of the third quarter of 2021 -- although that's a different metric than total devices sold. At the end of 2020, Amazon last reported having more than 50 million active Fire TV accounts. Amazon touted momentum for its connected-TV push, calling out the introduction last fall of the first Amazon-built TVs -- the Amazon Omni and 4-Series -- and a new, more powerful version of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. According to the ecommerce giant, Fire TV Stick ranked as the top selling product on Amazon on Black Friday among all Amazon products, and customers purchased a record number of Fire TV smart TVs on Amazon.com the week of Black Friday, including models from Insignia, Toshiba, and Pioneer and the Amazon Fire TV Omni and 4-Series.

Microsoft has decided to add "Buy Now, Pay Later" financing options to its Edge browser in the U.S. -- and the overwhelming response has been negative. The Register reports: The Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) option pops up at the browser level (rather than on checkout at an ecommerce site) and permits users to split any purchase between $35 and $1,000 made via Edge into four instalments spread over six weeks. The system is powered by Zip, previously Quadpay, and offers a Chrome extension for users who want to split their payments (interest-free if you make the payments on time, although Zip charges $1 per installment). Microsoft has now bundled the platform into Edge.

Feedback could charitably be described as negative so far, as demonstrated by the tags assigned to the post on Microsoft's Tech Community site. Comments (numbering 119 at time of writing) posted by visitors to the site can be pretty much summed up thusly: "This [is] a cheap and disgusting move from Microsoft and edge team to the browser users. You should be ashamed for pushing such crap to users. Listening to the users checkout flows, suggesting third party services. Bloating the browser. Seriously, be better and more responsible." "It's deeply shocking this is built into the base Windows OS on billions of devices," writes cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont in a tweet. "I feel like I should start a GoFundMe for Microsoft, or teach them how to beg bounty, as clearly they need the money."

"E-commerce sales jumped nearly 32 percent in 2020 compared to the prior year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data," reports Politico — and this year "online sales are on track to outpace that record..."

"Now, cities, climate scientists and companies are trying to figure out the consequences for the planet." The most recent research is starting to incorporate more of the complexities of retail. In January, MIT's Real Estate Innovation Lab published a study that simulated hundreds of thousands of those kinds of scenarios and found online shopping to be more sustainable than traditional retail 75 percent of the time... Most research suggests that ordering goods for delivery is more beneficial for the environment because it means people are making fewer individual shopping trips. The average U.S. consumer goes to the grocery store at least 300 times a year. If they drove there, it was likely in a gas-powered vehicle. Plus, there tends to be higher energy demands at storefronts compared to warehouses. But that scale "could easily tip in the other direction," according to a study of the U.S. market published last spring by the sustainable investment firm Generation. The firm's researchers found that e-commerce is 17 percent more carbon efficient than traditional retail, but could change with a few tweaks to their assumptions, such as the number of items purchased in a single visit, the amount of packaging and the efficiency of last-mile delivery...

In an email, Amazon spokesperson Luis Davila pointed to findings by company scientists that suggest online shopping produces fewer emissions than driving to shop at a store; for instance, the company estimates that a single delivery van trip can take 100 round-trip car journeys off the road, on average. During the pandemic, customers made fewer trips to Whole Foods Market stores and other brick-and-mortar Amazon locations and shifted to home delivery, which also lowered emissions. But take a step back, and a bigger, more complex picture emerges. From 2019 to 2020, Amazon's U.S. sales jumped 36 percent to $263.5 billion. By the company's own account, its overall emissions spiked 19 percent, equivalent to running 15 coal plants for one year. More fossil fuel use and investments in buildings, data servers and transportation were key drivers.

That figure reflects its response to consumer demand during Covid-19, but doesn't capture progress Amazon made, Davila said. He said the company tracks the amount of carbon per dollar of gross merchandise sales — a concept known as carbon intensity — and by that measure, Amazon decreased the amount of carbon per purchase last year by 16 percent. In a blog post in June, a company scientist argued that this metric allows high-growth companies like Amazon to identify efficiencies. Amazon also reduced emissions from the electricity it bought by 4 percent due to new investments in clean energy, despite expanding its buildings' square footage. The company is about two-thirds of the way toward 100 percent renewable energy — a key pillar of the company's plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2040.

Emissions from deliveries are expected to decrease as Amazon deploys 100,000 electric vans in the coming decade. Davila did not disclose what portion of the company's fleet that accounts for today.
The director of MIT's Real Estate Innovation Lab also warns that cardboard boxes are some of the largest carbon pollutants in the system regardless of the method of delivery. (Politico points out most packaging ultimately "ends up in a landfill or is burned to produce energy, generating 105.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, according to federal data.") That data also shows only 9% of plastic gets recycled, "because flexible plastic films and pouches and many take out containers still aren't recyclable. Neither are plastic bags, unless consumers bring them to the grocery store."

One recycler tells the site that many companies are now promising to use more recycled materials in their packaging, including Amazon, PepsiCo, Coca Cola and Target — but urges "extended producer responsibility," in which companies (not taxpayers) cover the costs of cleaning up their packaging.

"Ali Ghodsi was happily researching AI at Berkeley when he helped invent a revolutionary bit of code — and he wanted to give it away for free," remembers Forbes India. "But few would take it unless he charged for it.

"Now his startup is worth $28 billion, and the career academic is a billionaire with a reputation as one of the best CEOs in the Valley." (Literally. VC Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz calls him the best CEO in Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio of hundreds of companies.) Inside a 13th-floor boardroom in downtown San Francisco, the atmosphere was tense. It was November 2015, and Databricks, a two-year-old software company started by a group of seven Berkeley researchers, was long on buzz but short on revenue. The directors awkwardly broached subjects that had been rehashed time and again. The startup had been trying to raise funds for five months, but venture capitalists were keeping it at arm's length, wary of its paltry sales. Seeing no other option, NEA partner Pete Sonsini, an existing investor, raised his hand to save the company with an emergency $30 million injection...

Many of the original founders, Ghodsi in particular, were so engrossed with their academic work that they were reluctant to start a company — or charge for their technology, a best-of-breed piece of future-predicting code called Spark, at all. But when the researchers offered it to companies as an open-source tool, they were told it wasn't "enterprise ready". In other words, Databricks needed to commercialise. "We were a bunch of Berkeley hippies, and we just wanted to change the world," Ghodsi says. "We would tell them, 'Just take the software for free', and they would say 'No, we have to give you $1 million'."

Databricks' cutting-edge software uses artificial intelligence to fuse costly data warehouses (structured data used for analytics) with data lakes (cheap, raw data repositories) to create what it has coined data "lakehouses" (no space between the words, in the finest geekspeak tradition). Users feed in their data and the AI makes predictions about the future. John Deere, for example, installs sensors in its farm equipment to measure things like engine temperature and hours of use. Databricks uses this raw data to predict when a tractor is likely to break down. Ecommerce companies use the software to suggest changes to their websites that boost sales. It's used to detect malicious actors — both on stock exchanges and on social networks.

Ghodsi says Databricks is ready to go public soon. It's on track to near $1 billion in revenue next year, Sonsini notes. Down the line, $100 billion is not out of the question, Ghodsi says — and even that could be a conservative figure. It's simple math: Enterprise AI is already a trillion-dollar market, and it's certain to grow much larger. If the category leader grabs just 10 percent of the market, Ghodsi says, that's revenues of "many, many hundred billions."
Later in the article Ghodsi offers this succinct summary of the market they entered.

"It turns out that if you dust off the neural network algorithms from the '70s, but you use way more data than ever before and modern hardware, the results start becoming superhuman."

Amazon is officially in the TV set business. From a report: After years of selling Fire TV devices that plug into third-party HDTVs and teaming with TV makers for Fire TV-based products, the ecommerce giant is rolling out the first-ever Amazon-built TVs: the Amazon Fire TV Omni Series ($410 and up), which provides hands-free Alexa voice navigation, and the value-priced 4-Series smart TV line ($370 and up). They're set to ship in October.

In addition, Amazon is baking in new features to the overall Fire TV platform, including bringing TikTok content to the platform in the U.S. and Canada; letting users access Netflix's shuffle-mode feature via Alexa; and being able to ask Alexa for movie or TV show recommendations. The company also is bowing the new Fire TV Stick 4K Max ($55), which it says is more powerful than the prior-generation model and is Amazon's first streaming media player to launch with Energy Star certification and Wi-Fi 6 support.

"Amazon is looking to add a digital currency and blockchain expert to its payments team," reports CNBC. According to a recent job posting, Amazon's payments acceptance and experience team is seeking to hire an "experienced product leader to develop Amazon's Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap."

"You will leverage your domain expertise in Blockchain, Distributed Ledger, Central Bank Digital Currencies and Cryptocurrency to develop the case for the capabilities which should be developed, drive overall vision and product strategy, and gain leadership buy-in and investment for new capabilities," according to the job posting, which was previously reported by Insider... An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement: "We're inspired by the innovation happening in the cryptocurrency space and are exploring what this could look like on Amazon.

"We believe the future will be built on new technologies that enable modern, fast, and inexpensive payments, and hope to bring that future to Amazon customers as soon as possible.
UPDATE (7/26): While CNBC speculated the move meant that Amazon "could be taking a more serious look at cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin," Reuters reported the next day that Amazon had "denied a media report saying the e-commerce giant was looking to accept bitcoin payments by the end of the year."

But reports like CNBC's nonetheless caused a 17% spike in the price of Bitcoin, according to Bloomberg, which briefly boosted its price back above $40,000 (before dropping back down to $38,000...)

E-commerce firm Etsy announced Wednesday that it is buying the secondhand fashion app Depop for $1.62 billion. From a report: Founded in the U.K. in 2011, Depop lets people buy and sell used clothes through its online marketplace. The company has attracted a predominantly younger audience thanks to its social media savvy and messaging on environmental and ethical shopping. Depop boasts approximately 30 million registered users across 150 countries. Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said the company was "thrilled" to be adding what it believes to be the "resale home for Gen Z consumers" to Etsy.

"Depop is a vibrant, two-sided marketplace with a passionate community, a highly-differentiated offering of unique items, and we believe significant potential to further scale," Silverman said in a statement Wednesday. "We see significant opportunities for shared expertise and growth synergies across what will now be a tremendous 'house of brands' portfolio of individually distinct, and very special, ecommerce brands."

The major growth in Amazon's advertising unit means its revenue contribution is now 2.4 times larger than Snap, Twitter, Roku and Pinterest combined, and it's growing 1.7 times as quickly, according to Loop Capital. CNBC reports: Amazon's "Other" unit, which is primarily made up of advertising but also includes sales related to other service offerings, grew revenue a whopping 77% year-over-year to more than $6.9 billion in the first quarter, the company reported last month. "Performance ads on the ecommerce sites fueled by Amazon's high-intent traffic and unparalleled user insights are providing significant value for sellers and brands," Loop Capital analysts wrote in the Monday note.

They also cited the company's presentation at the recent IAB NewFronts that discussed the company's efforts in the streaming space. Amazon said early this month its ad-supported streaming video content now reaches more than 120 monthly users every month, driven by platforms like Twitch. Amazon generated $22.4 billion in ad revenue in the past 12 months, up 65% year-over-year, according to Loop. That was 2.4 times the $9.3 combined revenue total of middle-cap ad platforms Snap, Twitter, Roku and Pinterest, which grew by 38% over that same timeframe.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the world's largest gaming market, China, console games play a relatively small part as their revenue has been meagre compared to mobile and PC games for years -- at least by the official numbers. There remains a community of hardcore console lovers, but they are finding it harder to get hold of devices and cartridges recently. A handful of grey market videogame console vendors on Taobao stopped selling and shipping this week, according to checks by TechCrunch and online posts by gamers.

Google tried to copy Amazon's playbook to become the shopping hub of the internet, with little success. Now it is trying something different: the anti-Amazon strategy. From a report: Google is trying to present itself as a cheaper and less restrictive option for independent sellers. And it is focused on driving traffic to sellers' sites, not selling its own version of products, as Amazon does. In the last year, Google eliminated fees for merchants and allowed sellers to list their wares in its search results for free. It is also trying to make it easier for small, independent shops to upload their inventory of products to appear in search results and buy ads on Google by teaming up with Shopify, which powers online stores for 1.7 million merchants who sell directly to consumers. But like Google's many attempts during its two-decade quest to compete with Amazon, this one shows little sign of working. Google has nothing as alluring as the $295 billion that passed through Amazon's third-party marketplace in 2020. The amount of goods people buy on Google is "very small" by comparison -- probably around $1 billion, said Juozas Kaziukenas, the founder of Marketplace Pulse, a research company.

Amazon is a fixture in the lives of many Americans. It has usurped Google as the starting point for shoppers and has become equally essential for marketers. Amazon's global advertising business grew 30 percent to $17.6 billion in 2020, trailing only Google and Facebook in the United States. But as the pandemic has forced many stores to go online, it has created a new opening for Google to woo sellers who feel uneasy about building their businesses on Amazon. [...] Sellers often complain about Amazon's fees, which can account for a quarter of every sale, not including the cost of advertising, and the pressure to spend more to succeed. Merchants on Amazon do not have a direct relationship with their customers, limiting their ability to communicate with them and to generate future business. And because everything is contained within the Amazon world, it is harder to create a unique look and feel that express a brand's identity the way companies can on their own websites. High-profile Venture Capitalist Bill Gurley added said the article misses a key point, that is, "Amazon benefits from 20 years of supply chain investment. Even if you own the leading search engine, you cannot emulate 1-click 1.5 day shipping with high certainty (for consumer)."

YouTube outlined a string of new features coming to the internet's biggest video platform, including enhancements to YouTube TV and the rollout next month in the U.S. of YouTube Shorts -- its tool for creating short-form vertical videos a la TikTok. From a report: YouTube TV, Google's pay-TV service, will introduce an add-on option that will let subscribers watch shows in 4K, stream programming to an unlimited number of devices at home, and download content for offline viewing. Other features on YouTube's roadmap include the expansion of a new ecommerce feature to let viewers buy products directly from creators' channels; a way to let fans purchase "applause" for their favorite channels; automatically adding video chapters to relevant videos that don't have creator-uploaded chapters; and more personalized mixes on YouTube Music.

Amazon.com has agreed to pay more than $61.7 million to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission, which alleges the ecommerce giant failed to pay Amazon Flex drivers the full amount of tips received over a 2 1/2-year period. FTC: According to the FTC's administrative complaint against Amazon and its subsidiary, Amazon Logistics, the company regularly advertised that drivers participating in the Flex program would be paid $18-25 per hour for their work making deliveries to customers. The ads, along with numerous other documents provided to Flex drivers, also prominently featured statements such as: "You will receive 100% of the tips you earn while delivering with Amazon Flex." "Rather than passing along 100 percent of customers' tips to drivers, as it had promised to do, Amazon used the money itself," said Daniel Kaufman, Acting Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "Our action today returns to drivers the tens of millions of dollars in tips that Amazon misappropriated, and requires Amazon to get drivers' permission before changing its treatment of tips in the future." Amazon Flex is a program in which drivers, classified by Amazon as independent contractors, can agree to make deliveries using their personal vehicles. Flex drivers deliver goods and groceries ordered through the Prime Now and AmazonFresh programs, which allow customers to give the drivers a tip.

Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur behind a payment processing startup, is funding a multimillion trip to space aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which could be the first-ever orbital flight crewed entirely by non-astronauts. CNN reports: Isaacman, 37, said he will command the mission, which is slated for late-2021 and will see the spacecraft make a "multi-day" trip into Earth's orbit, according to a press release. Isaacman has purchased three additional seats aboard the mission. The seats will be donated to a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital "ambassador," and a member of the public who enters for a chance to join the trip.

The St. Jude ambassador has already been selected, Isaacman said. He did not disclose any details of their identity beyond saying it would be a woman and a front-line healthcare worker who's "committed to helping kids beat cancer." The fourth seat is reserved for a winner of a contest, limited to customers of Isaacman's eCommerce platform, Shift4Shop. Eligible competitors will have to launch an online store on the platform and tweet a video about their "entrepreneurial story," which will then be reviewed by "a panel of celebrity judges, " according to the company. The names of the judges were not yet disclosed. It's not clear when the winners will be chosen, though Isaacman told reporters on a conference call Monday that the crew members could all begin training within 30 days.

Isaacman added that this mission, dubbed Inspiration4, with the "4" referencing the number of crew members, "is the realization of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars." Isaacman said he wanted the mission to also mark a "historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to tackle childhood cancer," and he pledged to also donate $100 million to the hospital as part of a push to raise $200 million more dollars for the organization's research. It's not clear exaclty how long the trip will be or where in orbit it will fly. [SpaceX CEO Elon Musk] told Isaacman on Monday, "wherever you want to go, we'll take you there."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Marc Lore, a serial entrepreneur who sold his startup Jet.com to Walmart for $3 billion and then oversaw the transformation of the retail giant's e-commerce business over the last four years, is leaving his full-time role with the company at the end of the month, he told Recode. His next big entrepreneurial swing will be something far afield from his current expertise: a multi-decade project to build "a city of the future" supported by "a reformed version of capitalism." "It's a new model for society we'll be testing," he teased.

Lore declined to offer more details, but said he would be prepared to reveal additional information in the coming months. Some who have heard of the project say one focus will be on giving everyday citizens direct economic upside in the city's growth. "Imagine a city with the vibrancy, diversity and culture of New York City combined with the efficiency, safety and innovation of Tokyo and the sustainability, governance, and social services of Sweden," reads the vision statement for the project. "This will be our New City." "This is going to be a lifelong project," he added. "It's the thing I'm most passionate about."

Some sellers on Amazon are tricking the ecommerce platform into displaying thousands of reviews for unrelated products to boost their ranking and mislead customers, ArsTechnica writer Timothy Lee reports. Lee discovered the issue, which has been documented by the media in recent years, after he went to check the review of a drone he had purchased for his children. The product page of drone had glowing reviews for honey. Lee reached out to Amazon, which confirmed that this practice is in violation of its terms and conditions and quickly took down thousands of bogus reviews. He writes: Whatever action Amazon ultimately takes against these particular vendors Amazon's broader efforts leave a lot to be desired. A company shouldn't be able to secure a top slot in search results with such obvious subterfuge.

The top-reviewed drones in Amazon's search results came from brands with names that seemed to be chosen at random. My drone was made by "HONGXUNJIE." Other highly-rated drones on Amazon are made by "SHWD," "Taktoppy," "SimileLine," "Hffeeque," "Mafix," "MINOSNEO," and so forth. Clicking on the names of these "brands" takes you to a search result with no additional information on who made these products. Amazon could easily require sellers to provide some basic transparency about these listings -- disclosing where these manufacturers are located, how long they've been in business, and which other brands they own. This might make it easier for Amazon to punish companies that try to mislead customers with fake reviews.

European Union lawmakers are considering whether current rules aimed at limiting the practice of geoblocking across the bloc should be extended to cover access to streaming audio-visual content. From a report: Access to services like Netflix tends to be gated to individual EU Member States, meaning Europeans can be barred from accessing libraries of content offered elsewhere in the region. So if you're trying to use your Netflix subscription to access the service after moving to another Member State, or want to access inventory offered by Netflix elsewhere in Europe, the answer is typically a big fat no, as we've reported before. This undermines the core concept of the EU's Single Market (and the Digital Single Market -- aka the frictionless ecommerce end-goal which rules such as those limiting geoblocking aim to deliver). The Commission is alive to ongoing issues around online access to audio-visual content. In a review of the two-year-old Geo-blocking Regulation published today, it says it will kick off discussions with the audiovisual sector on ways to improve consumer access to this type of copyrighted content across the bloc.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Amazon.com said it now has about 1 million employees after hiring 250,000 workers in the third quarter, part of a growth spurt driven by booming ecommerce sales during the coronavirus pandemic and a milestone for a company founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookseller. Despite its rapid ascent, Amazon still has fewer workers than the nation's biggest private employer, Walmart, which has 2.2 million global workers.

Even so, Amazon's explosive growth underscores the historic shift in financial might from manufacturers such as General Motors, U.S. Steel and General Electric. In the 1950s, these three corporations were the country's biggest employers, with a combined workforce of more than 1 million employees at the time. Today, the three employ about 400,000 workers as the U.S. economy has shed factory jobs in favor of service-oriented work. In a conference call on Thursday, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said the company hired "a lot more people to support the strong customer demand." After hiring 250,000 full-time and part-time workers in the quarter ended in September, Amazon has hired another 100,000 workers in October, he said. The jobs pay a minimum of $15 an hour and include benefits such as health insurance, retirement benefits and parental leave, he added.

Amazon has teamed up with Universal Music and Warner Music to remaster thousands of popular streaming tracks to better-than-CD audio quality [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], as the music industry tries to lure listeners to pricier subscriptions. From a report: In addition to a standard $10 a month streaming service comparable to Spotify, Amazon offers a high-definition option that delivers songs to smartphones at CD sound quality or better. This service costs $15 a month, or $13 a month for members of its Prime shipping programme. The ecommerce group has spent the past year working to boost its pricier streaming service with albums from stars including Lady Gaga, Nirvana, Ariana Grande and Bob Marley in what it calls "ultra high-definition." To do so, Universal Music went back to the original recordings of albums such as Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye's Diana & Marvin and worked with sound engineers to remaster them. Amazon says the audio will "reveal nuances that were once flattened in files compressed for digital streaming or CD manufacturing." The move comes as the inflow of cash from music streaming has slowed over the past year as the market matures