Amazon Paws

2025-06-18

Employees are forced to move close to large offices or will be fired without compensation

Bloomberg reports Amazon is ordering employees to move closer to larger office buildings (“Hubs”). These larger buildings are located in cities such as Seattle, Arlington (Virginia) or Washington DC. For some employees this will mean to move across the whole country. Officially this is for enhanced efficiencies and employee happiness, additionally CEO expects efficiency gains by AI advancements. On the other hand Amazon has eliminated 27,000 positions since 2022. "Telling workers to relocate will likely prompt some to quit, which can be a less expensive way to reduce headcount than executing layoffs and paying severance packages." writes Bloomberg.

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[Source 1]

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2025-06-18

Large US retailers consider creating their own cryptocurrency

As reported by the Wall Street Journal retail giants Walmart and Amazon consider creating own so-called “stablecoins” (cryptocurrencies backed pegged to other assets, e.g. US dollars). This came just days before the “GENIUS Act”, a law regulating the issuing of such coins, was passed by the senate. In the best case the retail giants just try to cut costs and avoid fees from banks and payment companies such as Visa and Mastercard — but critics of the law warn that the rules regarding such stable coins are much more lax than those for classic payment products.

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2025-06-15

Amazon sponsors US military parade on Trump's birthday

Black text "America" and a "250" below. The number is written in red, white and blue.

Amazon, among other corporations, was anounced as a sponsor for the military parade for the 250th birthday of the US army. This event was not celebrated in any of the previous years and falls on US president's 79th birthday (but this is pure coincidence, of course - especially since Trump wished for a military parade in his first term).

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2025-06-13

Catalonia’s Labour Inspectorate fines Amazon for workplace surveilance

The surveillance tools used in their warehouses and delivery was not transparent enough for the regulators. The fine of €2401 has mostly a symbolic nature, but it is the first fine of the new “rider law” from 2022 that regulates platform workers such a delivery drivers. The total amount of fines for labour violations found in the end of 2024 might be around €100k by estimation of the union CCOO.

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2025-06-13

Amazon renews deal to buy 1.92 GW nuclear power

The retail and data center giant has renewed a deal to buy nuclear power for its data centers in Pennsylvania. The original contract dates back to last year, but was overturned by regulators when Amazon tried to avoid paying fees to support the public power grid.

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2025-06-10

Amazon wants to create a 'not so sovereign' sovereign cloud in German region deprived of water

A red and white horizontal bar. In the middle is the coat of arms of Brandenburg. — The flag of the German state Brandenburg

Local politicians cheer Amazon announced plans to create a 'sovereign cloud' in Germany, but critics claim it might be not so sovereign at all. After all US laws do still apply to subsidiaries of Amazon. This would mean US intelligence services could still spy on Germany and European customer's data and or even black mail Europeans. Amazon plans building data centers in Brandenburg (Germany), a region suffering from a water shortage. The investment value will be about 8 billion Euros.

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2025-06-05

Carbon emission grew 182% from 2020-2023 - Amazon with the largest growth

A globe with the letters ITU and a flash — The logo of the organization who published the report

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) published a report showing that major cloud providers have massively increased their emissions. Amazon's operational carbon emissions grew the most at 182% in 2023 compared to three years before, followed by Microsoft at 155%, Meta at 145% and Alphabet at 138%. Interestingly, Amazon claims it is running on 100% clean energy. Reuters reported first.

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2025-06-02

"Bundeskartellamt has concerns about Amazon’s use of so-called price control mechanisms"

The official "eagle" symbol of Germany, a German flag, and the text "Bundeskartellamt" — The seal of the German antitrust agency

The German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) — Germany's national competition regulatory agency — has published preliminary results of its investigation against Amazon. In the focus of the investigation has been the Amazon Marketplace. In its online stores, Amazon itself (“Amazon Retail”) and other sellers (“amazon.de Marketplace”) compete. While this is already confusing for consumers, the antitrust office sees a conflict of interest and an abuse of market power by Amazon. The antirust body complains Amazon ranks sellers with “high prices” invisible, and does not even communicate what is considered a “high price” transparently. Amazon ironically calls its practices the “Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy”.

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[Source 1]

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2025-03-28

Local voice processing to be removed from Alexa

An Amazon Alexa voice assistant on a table. It is a round speaker with some buttons.

Amazon announced to remove the capability of its Alexa devices to do local voice recognition from its (your) devices. Now all speech recordings will be sent to the cloud, but at least Amazon won't store them. It has hinted this is because of new “AI” features under the name “Alexa+” in the future. In the past Amazon has passed voice recordings of its customers to the police as evidence, and let workers around the word transcribe recordings to “improve Alexa's performance”.

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2019-06-21

Amazon wins legal fight against states in Amazon region over .amazon TLD

After a years long legal dispute, Amazon convinced the ICANN to grant the .amazon TLD to the Amazon corporation. Nation states in the region around the Amazon River - like Brazil and Peru - have unsuccessfully tried to protest the decision. The ICANN decision does not even mention the rights of indigenous rights of people living in the Amazon region.

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[Source 1]