Once a modest online seller of books, Amazon is now one of the largest companies in the world, and its former CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s most wealthy person. We track developments, both of Bezos and Amazon, its growth as a video producer, the popular Prime service, as well as its own hardware, which includes the Amazon Kindle e-reader, Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, and Amazon Fire TV streaming boxes.
That’s the milestone Amazon just crossed. As The Wall Street Journal notes, it’s coming up fast on the company’s total human workforce, which the paper estimates at 1.56 million people right now, and as Amazon’s CEO has said is likely to go down over the next few years.
The million includes the new touch-sensitive Vulcan robot unveiled last month, though probably not Amazon’s rumored work on autonomous humanoid delivery robots.
The Guardian reports that a letter was sent to executives last month, representing more than 200 Amazon employees, accusing the company of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Complaints center around last year’s revamp of the company’s work-from-home policies for disabled employees, which workers also claim have been processed using AI automations. They further allege that the deletion of some Slack messages infringes their rights to organize.
Amazon announced that the Blade Runner 2049 and Dune director is going to take on another high-profile franchise with the next James Bond flick. It will be the first one produced after Amazon reportedly paid $1 billion to obtain full creative control over James Bond.
Villeneuve:
I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come. This is a massive responsibility, but also, incredibly exciting for me and a huge honor. Amy, David, and I are absolutely thrilled to bring him back to the screen.
Kim Kardashian’s side quests don’t always make the most sense, but Deadline reports that she’s attached to produce and star in Amazon MGM’s new movie based on the Bratz dolls, which somehow feels very right.
Streaming platforms might be having a hard time bringing on new subscribers, but according to Nielsen’s most recent Gauge report, services like YouTube, Pluto TV, Roku, and Tubi overtook traditional broadcast TV and cable in terms of viewership for the first time last month.
The retail giants are looking into ways they could use or issue stablecoins — a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar or another asset, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. As noted by the WSJ, the move could allow Amazon and Walmart to receive payments faster, while avoiding fees from credit card transactions.
In an email to an ad buyer seen by Adweek, Amazon said it has “gradually increased” its ad load to four to six minutes per hour — double the two to three-and-a-half breaks it touted when rolling out ads in January 2024.
Kelly Day, the vice president of Prime Video International, said last year that the streaming service launched with a lighter ad load to give viewers a “gentle entry into advertising.”
[adweek.com]
Amazon Key Access Control system is a new building intercom solution that uses the Ring app to let apartment dwellers answer their building door and buzz people in on their phones.
The intercoms need to be installed by a property manager, and the system includes virtual keys for communal spaces; keys for individual apartments aren’t mentioned. Interestingly, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff left Amazon to run a smart building access solution, but he’s now back at Amazon.
The company is laying off fewer than 100 staffers in its books division, Reuters reports. The company cut about 100 jobs on its devices and services team last month.
[reuters.com]
Amazon MGM Studios is reportedly making a movie that will depict the rollercoaster couple of days in November 2023 when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was ousted by the board, then pulled an “Uno Reverse” and was re-hired, after which nearly all of the board members in question subsequently departed.
Luca Guadagnino is in talks to direct, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with Andrew Garfield in talks to play Sam Altman. Production could begin as soon as this summer, per the report, with filming locations in San Francisco and Italy.
[hollywoodreporter.com]
I always enjoy Pablo Rochat’s delightfully unhinged projects whenever they cross my social media feeds and this one is no exception. It appears to be a work in progress, and really needs no further explanation but I will make two notes: 1) the tiny hats! 2) watch to the end for a great reaction.
The original deal between Amazon and Stellantis, first announced in 2022, was to create a “digital cockpit” for “millions” of Jeep, Dodge, and Ram vehicles — similar to how Google has developed operating systems for a handful of key automakers. But after three years, the two companies are now “winding down” that aspect of their partnership, Reuters says. (The e-commerce company also said it would purchase electric Ram ProMaster delivery vans; no word on whether that deal went through.) And it’s not looking good for a future Amazon in-car experience, as Reuters notes that most of the company’s Digital Cabin staffers have resigned or left the company.
[reuters.com]
Amazon engineers related their experience creating software to The New York Times:
The engineers said that the company had raised output goals and had become less forgiving about deadlines ... One Amazon engineer said his team was roughly half the size it had been last year, but it was expected to produce roughly the same amount of code by using A.I.
The Times likens the shift to that of Amazon warehouses, where robots “have increased the number of items each worker can pick to hundreds from dozens an hour.”
Former Surface chief Panos Panay left Microsoft for Amazon nearly two years ago, and now rumors are emerging that Amazon is in the early stages of creating a “large-sized foldable device” that might compete with Huawei’s folding laptop. That’s the rumor from Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says the device, if development progresses, is “projected to enter mass production in late 2026 or 2027.” Perhaps the Surface Neo will finally become an Amazon reality.
An Amazon spokesperson gave the figure to Reuters, adding, “...of course, some are employees and their families, but the overwhelming majority are customers that requested early access.”
However, Reuters says it found no evidence of Alexa Plus in the wild when searching “dozens of news sites” and social media.
Update May 17th: Amazon Spokesperson Eric Sveum emailed this statement to The Verge:
It’s simply wrong to say that Alexa+ isn’t available to customers—that assertion is false. Hundreds of thousands of customers have access to Alexa+ and we’re constantly inviting more customers that have requested Early Access.
[reuters.com]
