An Amazon Web Services outage has a wide effect, Salesforce might be buying Slack and Pinterest tests new support for virtual events. This is your Daily Crunch for November 25, 2020. And for those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving: Enjoy! There will be no newsletter tomorrow, and then Darrell Etherington will be filling in for […]

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Amazon Web Services is currently having an outage, taking a chunk of the internet down with it. Several AWS services were experiencing problems as of early Wednesday, according to its status page. That means any app, site or service that relies on AWS might also be down, too. (As I found out the hard way […]

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Strong e-commerce sales are predicted to help lift overall holiday retail spending in the U.S., according to forecasts released today by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and eMarketer. Both firms expect to see overall retail sales growth during November and December, though the market may be impacted by slowing brick-and-mortar sales. Of the two, NRF […]

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As we head into the biggest shopping period of the year — which this year may well have an even stronger online component than usual because of COVID-19 — Amazon has launched its latest effort to combat the sale of counterfeit goods on its site. The e-commerce giant today announced that its IP Accelerator is […]

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I wasn’t super impressed when I reviewed the Echo Buds around this time last year, but Amazon’s first shot at Alexa-powered fully wireless earbuds was passable. And while they’ve already been on the market for a while now, the company’s continuing to deliver some key updates, including today’s addition of new fitness features. Say “Alexa, […]

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The Indian watchdog Competition Commission (CCI) of India said on Friday it has approved the $3.4 billion deal between the nation’s two largest retail giants, Future Group and Reliance Retail, posing a new headache for American e-commerce group Amazon, which had raised objections over the deal. The CCI, the Indian antitrust body, said in a […]

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Amazon has confirmed an early Financial Times report outlining layoffs at the retail giant’s Prime Air drone delivery program. “As part of our regular business operations, we are reorganizing one small team within our larger Prime Air organization to allow us to best align with the needs of our customers and the business,” spokesperson Kristen […]

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As your S3 storage requirements grow, it gets harder to understand exactly what you have, and this is especially true when it crosses multiple regions. This could have broad implications for administrators, who are forced to build their own solutions to get that missing visibility. AWS changed that this week when it announced a new […]

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President-elect Joe Biden may have spent eight years in an administration that doted on the tech industry, but that long honeymoon, punctuated by four years of Trump, looks to be over. Tech is on notice in 2020. The Russian election interference saga of the 2016 election opened the floodgates for social media’s ills. The subsequent […]

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As strange as they are, you would be forgiven for forgetting about the existence of Echo Frames. Amazon announced the smart glasses among a deluge of Alexa-focused products at an event last year (which also included an even stranger smart ring). The experimental product was a Day 1 Edition device — meaning it was available […]

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As Amazon’s Marketplace continues to grow and mature, a new opportunity has emerged in the world of e-commerce for a new breed of startups to consolidate the most promising of the smaller businesses that sell via Amazon’s platform, and build out their own economies of scale within that ecosystem. In the latest development, SellerX — […]

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African cross-border fintech startup Chipper Cash has raised a $30 million Series B funding round led by Ribbit Capital with participation of Bezos Expeditions — the personal VC fund of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Chipper Cash was founded in San Francisco in 2018 by Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled. The company offers mobile-based, no fee, P2P […]

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Amazon announced today it’s bringing Alexa Routines — the feature that allows users to create their own Alexa shortcuts that combine multiple actions — to its Fire TV platform. Starting today, Amazon customers will be able to include Fire TV commands in their Alexa routines, including those that power on or off the TV, open […]

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We review each of Apple’s new M1-powered Macs, Twitter launches its new Stories-like format and Amazon launches a pharmacy service. This is your Daily Crunch for November 17, 2020. The big story: Reviewing Apple’s new Macs We’ve got three big hardware reviews today, each one highlighting a new Mac with Apple’s M1 chipset. First up, […]

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When you’re laser-focused on reaching beyond the stars, it’s hard to remember more earthly, mundane tasks. That’s why we’re giving you an extra week to score early-bird savings to TC Sessions: Space 2020 (December 16-17). So, to all you harried, procrastinating visionaries: take a breath, relax a bit and buy your pass before November 20 […]

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Consumer healthcare stocks are plummeting this morning on news that Amazon has finally launched its integrated pharmacy service. Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy, a delivery service for prescription medications The news, which could dramatically reshape the healthcare landscape by offering deep discounts on prescription medication and two-day delivery services for Amazon Prime customers, has already taken […]

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A little over two years after its $753 million acquisition of the prescription medicine delivery service PillPack, Amazon has finally launched Amazon Pharmacy, its online and mobile prescription medication ordering and fulfillment service. Using a secure pharmacy profile, customers can add their insurance information, manage prescriptions and choose payment options all through Amazon’s service. And […]

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TC Sessions: Space (December 16 & 17) is just a few short weeks away and there is perhaps no better time than the end of this horrid year to set our eyes to the horizon and dream of some place far, far away. David Limp, Amazon’s SVP of Amazon Devices and Services, is just the […]

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Welcome back to Human Capital. In this week’s edition of HC, you’ll read about the latest labor struggles at Amazon and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, President-Elect Joe Biden’s promises to gig workers, a primary care network for Black people and people of color and more. Lastly, I pulled out some nuggets from DoorDash’s S-1 that […]

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WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max is finally coming to Amazon’s Fire TV, nearly half a year after it launched. The service, which combines HBO content with an expanded selection from WarnerMedia’s library and a slate of originals, debuted without support for two of the largest streaming platforms in the U.S.: Amazon Fire TV and Roku. […]

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Reliance Retail has acquired a majority stake in furniture and decor platform Urban Ladder, making a broader push into e-commerce as the largest retail chain in India gears up to fight Amazon and Flipkart. In a filing to the local stock exchange, Reliance Retail said it had acquired a 96% stake in Urban Ladder for […]

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The latest Mac operating system arrives, Amazon faces a lawsuit over PPE and Disney+ turns one. This is your Daily Crunch for November 12, 2020. The big story: Apple releases macOS Big Sur This update, which was first announced five months ago at WWDC, includes a number of design changes that continue to blur the […]

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A lot of the focus in online education — and, let’s face it, education overall — has been about professional development for knowledge workers, education for K-12 and how best to deliver cost-effective, engaging higher learning to those in college and beyond. But in what might be a sign of the times, today a startup […]

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It’s hard to shake the sense that the smart speaker market would look considerably different had the HomePod Mini arrived several years back. It’s not so much that the device is transformative on the face of it, but it’s impossible to deny that it marks a dramatically different approach to the category than the one […]

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Rivian is opening up pre-orders for three editions of its upcoming electric pickup truck and SUV that start as low as $67,500 and with a battery range of more than 300 miles. However, more options will follow, including a base version that will have a smaller range of at least 250 miles and a price […]

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Google changes its storage policy, Facebook extends its political ad ban and Ring doorbells are recalled. This is your Daily Crunch for November 11, 2020. The big story: Google Photos will end free, unlimited storage Google is changing its storage policies for free accounts in a way that could have a big impact on anyone […]

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Christian Smalls, a former Amazon warehouse employee, filed a lawsuit against the company today alleging Amazon failed to provide personal protective equipment to Black and Latinx workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The class action suit alleges Amazon failed to properly protect its warehouse workers and violated elements of New York City’s human rights law, as […]

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For all the myriad ways Amazon has made shopping more convenient, the last-mile delivery can be an issue. The company’s Key service is an attempt to address those issues, offering a way for packages to get delivered even when residents aren’t home or are otherwise unreachable. Currently the company offers home, car and garage delivery […]

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As subscriptions become an increasingly alluring business model, fintechs will be forced to consider whether or not this proven strategy is worth the risk.

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Amazon on Thursday announced a lawsuit against more than a dozen bad actors, including online influencers and other businesses, who attempted to evade Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting measures by promoting luxury counterfeit products on social media sites, like TikTok and Instagram, as well as on personal websites, then using Amazon seller accounts to fulfill those orders. The […]

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