Amazon to Joe Biden: We pay all the taxes we owe

New York (CNN Business)Joe Biden jumped into the debate over corporate taxes with a jab at Amazon on Thursday, and Amazon jabbed back. "I have nothing against Amazon, but no company pulling in billions of dollars of profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers. We need to reward work, not just wealth," the former Vice President tweeted, linking to a New York Times story from April about how Amazon got a rebate on its corporate taxes in 2018. In the early evening, Amazon responded: "We've paid $2.6B in corporate taxes since 2016. We pay every penny we owe. Congress designed tax laws to encourage companies to reinvest in the American economy. We have. $200B in investments since 2011 & 300K US jobs. Assume VP Biden's complaint is w/ the tax code, not Amazon." According to the left leaning Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, Amazon got a $129 million refund on its $11.2 billion in profits in 2018 because of various tax credits. Taking out state taxes, the last time the company paid federal taxes was in 2016, according to the group's analysis of regulatory filings.

To power Prime one-day shipping, Amazon asks sellers to send it more stuff

Amazon is offering deep warehouse discounts to its sellers in a bid to jump-start its Prime one-day shipping program. The company last month announced plans to transition its popular Prime membership deliveries from two-day shipping to one day. To increase the number of items it can offer for one-day delivery, Amazon will need to have more stuff spread around its US warehouses, where it can be closer to more customers. So, the company on Wednesday sent out an email to sellers, offering discounts of up to 75% on Amazon warehouse storage fees in exchange for sellers storing more of their most popular products with the company. Amazon stores, packages and ships independent sellers' items through a program called Fulfillment by Amazon. 

Amazon considered letting Alexa listen to you without a wake word

A patent made public today and filed by Amazon would allow the company's voice assistant Alexa to start recording audio before users say a "wake word." According to the patent, it would allow users to more naturally communicate with their devices, saying phrases like "Play some music, Alexa" rather than starting each command with "Alexa" or another chosen wake word. Currently, the voice assistant is unable to listen to or understand commands until the user utters the wake word. In practice, the patent would allow Alexa to "look backward" at recent things said aloud prior to hearing its name. For example, if a user said something like, "What's the weather going to be like today, Alexa?" the device would hear the trigger word "Alexa" and quickly go back over the prior phrase to process the command.

Amazon smashes earnings expectations

Amazon reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday that reflected an ongoing change at the company: less growth but fatter profit margins. Despite the huge earnings beat, Amazon stock is up just 1% in after-hours trading, as second-quarter operating profit guidance came below street estimates. Here are the most important numbers:

Amazon and Google settle feud, bring YouTube back to Fire TV devices

Feuding tech giants Amazon and Google have come to an agreement on their streaming services. After over a year of absence, the official YouTube app will return to Amazon Fire TV devices and Fire TV Edition smart TVs. Google pulled the video streaming app in early 2018 after it could not strike a deal with the online retail giant surrounding the availability of its products and services. According to reports at the time, Google was unhappy with Amazon because the retailer didn't sell a number of its products, including Chromecast and Google Home devices. The two companies couldn't strike a business deal that pleased both parties, so Google removed the official YouTube app from Fire TV devices at the start of 2018. This came a

Here’s What One Amazon Bull Took From the Annual Jeff Bezos Letter

This week’s release of Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to shareholders was a newsmaking event, what with the Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN) CEO challenging the company’s retail rivals to raise pay and putting eBay (EBAY) in the spotlight. Shares of Amazon, recently about flat at $1,844.50, are up more than 20% in 2019. Bullish analyst Anthony Chukumba of Loop Capitalon Friday reiterated a Buy rating on the stock, as well as a $2,200 price target that is about 19% higher than current levels and above FactSet’s $2,128 analyst average. He cited three key items from Bezos’ letter:

Amazon Jumps Back Into Corporate Renewables Market

Amazon on Monday said it will buy power from three future wind projects, two of them in Europe and the third in the U.S., while signaling that more deals could be coming soon. The announcement marks a return to the corporate renewables market for one of the biggest buyers of years past. The tech giant will back 229 megawatts of new wind capacity from projects in Ireland, Sweden and California to serve Amazon Web Services’ fleet of data centers. The wind farms will be built over the next two years. A 91-megawatt wind farm will be built in Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland, while a similarly sized project will be built in Bäckhammar, Sweden — near the windy coast of Vänern, the largest lake in the European Union.

Amazon is introducing private investors to high-risk start-ups in a new pilot program

Amazon is testing a new way to bolster its relationship with start-ups and possibly bring in more capital to the ecosystem. The fledgling effort, known as the Amazon Web Services Pro-Rata Program, is designed to link private investors with companies that use AWS, as well as venture funds whose portfolios are filled with potential cloud customers. Amazon is not investing money through the program.The Pro-Rata program is being run by Brad Holden, a former partner at TomorrowVentures (founded by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt), and Jason Hunt, who are both part of AWS's business development team focused on angel and seed relationships, according to an email they sent to investors in January.

Now part of Amazon, Eero reaffirms commitment to customer privacy

Eero wants you to know it still cares about your privacy, regardless of who owns it.Amazon's acquisition of the five-year-old startup, which makes home Wi-Fi hardware, is complete, Eero CEO and co-founder Nick Weaver said Tuesday in a blog post. In the post, Weaver wrote extensively about Eero's promise to maintain customer privacy and trust under its new ownership."We want to reaffirm our commitment to your privacy head-on," he wrote "At eero, we have always believed everyone has a fundamental right to privacy, especially in their own homes, and we take this extremely seriously."An Amazon spokeswoman said in an email statement that the deal "changes nothing for customers, especially how we are treating their privacy and security."

Amazon stops ordering from many suppliers, pushing them to bear the risks instead

Amazon.com Inc. abruptly stopped buying products over the last two weeks from many of its wholesale vendors, encouraging them to instead sell their products directly to consumers on Amazon’s marketplace. It’s the company’s latest move to boost profits at its core e-commerce business, even if that means disrupting relationships with longtime suppliers and potentially limiting customers’ choices. Thousands of vendors are affected, according to estimates from consultants who help clients sell on Amazon.