Washington Post:
Amazon today announced that Prime members can now enjoy six months of free unlimited access to The Washington Post National Digital Edition, a subscription usually retailing for $9.99 per month.
To me, this is very similar to Apple’s model.
The New York Times publicly lambastes Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos responds.
If Radio Shack does shutter its doors, I will miss them.
Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget is a long time Amazon investor. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider. Blodget invited Bezos on stage at this year’s Ignition conference for an interview. Bezos does not do a lot of interviews, let alone one of this length and scope.
The video of the complete interview is below. Follow the headline link for the text excerpts, with video excerpts and some interesting sidebars.
This is not news, just an interesting experience.
New York Times:
As some in Europe call for multinational companies to pay more taxes, Britain on Wednesday proposed a new 25 percent tax on the local profits of international companies, including tech giants like Google that use complicated structures to reduce their tax burden.
Echo is always on, much like “Hey Siri” or “OK Google”, always listening for its name, a name that you get to choose. Like Siri, you can ask Echo questions or give it commands, as long as they fit into its knowledge domain. Watch the video below to get a sense of how broad that domain really is. And, I suspect, that domain will continue to grow over time.
I think Amazon will sell a ton of these.
This will impact a lot of companies, Google being a bit of a poster child here. note that the elimination of the “double Irish” provision will not, by itself, change the tax rates negotiated by companies like Apple. That’s a separate issue.
About a month ago, word spread that Google-owned YouTube had completed negotiations to buy game-streaming service Twitch with an all-cash offer of $1 billion.
Yesterday, YouTube had the rug pulled from under them when Twitch announced that they had accepted another all-cash bid for $970 million from Amazon. Here’s the thank you post from Twitch CEO Emmett Shear.
So why would someone care about this? The key is the allure of Let’s Play, the general term for watching someone else play your favorite game. A huge win for Amazon. [Hat tip to Daniel Mark]
PC World:
Amazon.com has introduced a card reader coupled with smartphone and tablet apps that aim to provide small businesses with a way to accept payments on these devices.
At least in the short term, this is excellent news for both consumers and small businesses, as Amazon will push down the per transaction fee, down to 1.75 percent per swipe til the end of the year, then rising to 2.5 percent per swipe which is still lower than Square and PayPal Here.
WSJ:
Price isn’t the only issue keeping “Maleficent” and “Captain America” off of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.48% ‘s virtual shelves.
Walt Disney Co.’s dispute with the giant online retailer also encompasses promotion and product placement on the Amazon website, as well as questions over who makes up the difference when Amazon loses money to match the prices of competitors, said a person with knowledge of the matter.
Amazon has unveiled a new subscription service called Kindle Unlimited, designed to give Kindle readers unlimited access to a limited library of eBooks, all for $9.99 a month.
I think this is a bit of a stumble for Amazon, a money grab. I’m an insatiable reader and I would go for this if all of Amazon’s book library was included. But as is, no thanks.
Uber is now delivering ice cream. Imagine this value to Amazon or Google. Read the original Loop post for more…
Tech Crunch:
Amazon is refusing to comply with a request from the Federal Trade Commission to implement stricter controls that would prevent children from making in-app purchases.
CNET:
Amazon said Szabadi, who left the company in May after nearly six years, can’t solicit business from any of his former customers for 18 months after his departure. He joined Google as a lead for the reseller ecosystem team in May.
In response, Szabadi’s lawyer told Amazon that Szabadi has also signed an agreement with Google, vowing not to do business with any AWS clients that he remembers having “material direct contact” with, or that he knows “confidential information” about, according to the court document. The agreement is in effect for six months.
Google is not backing down and is planning a strong defense for the suit. said a person familiar with the company’s strategy.
Last December, Jeff Bezos raised the possibility of Amazon-branded drone based delivery.
I do love the impractical fantasy of that idea but, alas, the FAA has officially put the kibosh on it.
There’s been a lot of talk over the past few days about Amazon trying to buy developers by giving them $5,000 to build an app for the Fire Phone, up to a max of $15,000 for three apps. When I first heard this story, I thought Amazon’s plan was misguided, that they’d lay out a ton of money to buy their way into undisciplined relevancy, with an indiscriminate copy of apps that are available on Google Play and other Android app stores. Sort of a “me too” strategy.
But that’s not quite right.
Ever wondered how Amazon really works? The linked article gives you an insider’s look at all the moving pieces that work together to let you buy practically anything you’d ever want. Interesting article, but not a puff piece. Good stuff.
Amazon just launched their Prime Music service, promising more than a million songs, all free to members of Amazon Prime. Since I’m an Amazon Prime member, thought I’d take it for a spin.
In a nutshell, Amazon is sweetening its $99 per year Prime membership by adding a free streaming music component.
The company will expand its Prime membership offerings by adding a stockpile of old and newish music for subscribers to stream on demand. The Prime music service, which is scheduled to launch this June or July, will not include recent releases but instead restrict its catalog to songs and albums that are 6 months old and older, five music industry sources familiar with the company’s plans confirmed to BuzzFeed.
The implication here is that you might order a brand name product and receive a knockoff instead. I can’t imagine that Amazon isn’t working on a fix for this.
[VIDEO] Interesting move on Amazon’s part. I do question the effectiveness. I have yet to find a product to tag in my Twitter feed, though I have no doubt the spam will soon start to flow. Watch the video to see how this works.
The store is called Amazon Wearable Technology. Sections include Fitness and Wellness, Healthcare Devices, Wearable Cameras, Smart Watches, and Families, Kids, and Pets.
Here’s a link to the US version of the store. Not sure if this has yet rolled out in your country.
This is a big deal for Amazon and a bit of bad news for Netflix.
Amazon.com, Inc. today announced a content licensing agreement with HBO, making Prime Instant Video the exclusive online-only subscription home for select HBO programming. The collection includes award-winning shows such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Big Love, Deadwood, Eastbound & Down, Family Tree, Enlightened, Treme, early seasons of Boardwalk Empire and True Blood, as well as mini-series like Band of Brothers, John Adams and more. Previous seasons of other HBO shows, such as Girls, The Newsroom and Veep will become available over the course of the multi-year agreement, approximately three years after airing on HBO. The first wave of content will arrive on Prime Instant Video May 21. This is the first time that HBO programming has been licensed to an online-only subscription streaming service. This programming will remain on all HBO platforms.
A smart move for Amazon and Fire TV.
Interesting to see this impact on sales.
Amazon has a tough row to hoe here. Wooing developers to a nascent market is never easy. Just ask Microsoft.
I would not have made the connection from Uber to same day package delivery, but once you see the logic, hard to punch a hole in it. They are leveraging their existing GPS tracking infrastructure.
Bloomberg:
Microsoft Corp. is going Hollywood with a cast including comedians Sarah Silverman and Seth Green, aspiring World Cup players and eerily human robots.
All are involved in shows that Microsoft’s new Xbox television studio plans to roll out globally starting in June. Helmed by former CBS Corp. honcho Nancy Tellem, who Microsoft hired 19 months ago to build a TV powerhouse from the ground up, the studio now has six series lined up — including a science-fiction thriller called “Humans” about humanoid robot workers — and more than a dozen projects in development.
This is Microsoft’s not-so-Trojan horse into the living room, building dependence on the Xbox One for accessing web-based programming on your TV, competing with Apple TV, Fire TV, and Google’s evolving TV solution.
I didn’t ask for games. I didn’t ask for photos. I asked for a streaming media solution that could do things right: Something easy to pick up, simple to use, and something that actually made the experience of playing and navigating through multimedia, dare I say it, fun.
Amazon promised all of the above with Fire TV, which the company unveiled Wednesday at an event in New York City. Unfortunately, the device doesn’t live up to its own hype. Perhaps Amazon’s homegrown solution was a bit premature and its ambitions too lofty, because while Fire TV can do almost everything, little of it is done right.
Ouch.
Follow the headline link for a wealth of data on app sales from the iOS and Mac App Stores, Google Play, Amazon, Windows Phone and PC. For eBooks, there are numbers for Apple iBooks and Kindle. This data has been available for years and is well known in the developer community, but not so well known in the general tech community.