Amazon takeover of iRobot to be blocked by EU | BBC

Amazon’s takeover of vacuum cleaner maker iRobot is set to be blocked by the European Union’s competition watchdog, the BBC understands.

It’s a blow to the tech giant, which was previously given the all-clear for the purchase by the UK government’s competition watchdog.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that its place in the UK market was “modest” and that it already faced several significant rivals.

Amazon declined to comment.

The online giant moved to buy iRobot, maker of the Roomba cleaner, in August 2022 in a takeover deal set to cost $1.7bn (£1.4bn).

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Amazon to sell cars online, starting with Hyundai | TechCrunch

It was inevitable. Amazon, which got its start selling books, is getting into the car business.

The e-commerce giant along with new partner Hyundai announced Thursday at the 2023 LA Auto Show that it will start selling vehicles on its website in the second half of 2024. Hyundai vehicles will be the first vehicles sold on Amazon.com’s U.S. store with other brands following later in the year.

The Amazon car sales section will allow customers to shop for vehicles in their area based on a range of preferences, including model, trim, color, and features, choose their preferred car, and then check out online with their chosen payment and financing options. Customers will be able to buy a vehicle online and then pick it up or have it delivered by their local dealership, according to Amazon.

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Amazon Deploys Generative AI to Enhance Product Review Summaries | Small Biz Trends

Amazon has unveiled generative AI technology to synthesize product reviews. This innovative approach will allow small business owners and customers to quickly gauge products without sifting through countless individual reviews to streamline online shopping experiences,

Amazon aims to feature a concise paragraph on the product details page, encapsulating the primary features and the collective sentiment gathered from customer reviews. This summarization aims to give readers an immediate grasp of recurring themes and insights from the reviews, negating the need to go through each one.

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Amazon Launches Innovative New Echo Devices | Small Biz Trends

Amazon has unveiled an expanded line of Echo products that are set to change the landscape of the home tech market, and with it, present opportunities for small businesses. The tech giant introduced four all-new Echo devices: the Echo Pop, Echo Show 5, Echo Show 5 Kids, and Echo Buds. Additionally, the Echo Auto is now available in eight more countries, bringing Alexa’s assistance to even more drivers around the globe.

Small businesses can leverage these advancements as Amazon’s smart devices become increasingly integrated into daily routines. With over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices now sold, these innovations are set to have broad reach and diverse applications.

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FTC orders supplement maker to pay $600K in first case involving hijacked Amazon reviews | TechCrunch

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has approved a final consent order in its first-ever enforcement action over a case involving “review hijacking,” or when a marketer steals consumer reviews of another product to boost the sales of its own. In this case, the FTC has ordered supplements retailer The Bountiful Company, the maker of Nature’s Bounty vitamins and other brands, to pay $600,000 for deceiving customers on Amazon where it used a feature to merge the reviews of different products to make some appear to have better ratings and reviews than they otherwise would have had if marketed under their own listings.

The case exposes how sellers have been exploiting an Amazon feature that allows sellers to request the creation of “variation” relationships between different products and SKUs. The feature is meant to help marketers and consumers alike as it creates a single detail page on Amazon.com that shows similar products that are different only in narrow, specific ways, the FTC explains — like items that come in a different color, size, quantity or flavor. For instance, a t-shirt may have a dozen SKUs associated with one another because the shirt comes in a wide variety of colors. For shoppers, it’s helpful to see all the options on one page so you can pick the item that best matches your needs and budget. In the case of supplements, the feature could be used to combine the same products by merging various SKUs featuring different quantities of the item in question, like bottles with 50, 100 or 200 pills, for example.

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AWS takes a hit in latest round of Amazon layoffs | TechCrunch

When Amazon announced it was laying off another 9,000 employees today, AWS employees were not exempt with Amazon CEO (and former AWS CEO) Andy Jassy announcing the cloud division would be included into today’s round.

TechCrunch is hearing that around 10% of today’s total came from AWS. The company would not confirm those numbers, instead referring to Jassy’s memo to employees that was published this morning as the gist of its statement.

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Daily Crunch: Sources say Times Internet plans to sell Indian streaming platform MX Player to Amazon | TechCrunch

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Game on: Amazon is in talks to acquire Indian video streaming giant MX Player from Times Internet, Manish reports. He writes that the video app is “popular for supporting a wide range of video formats and reliability on low-cost Android smartphones, has expanded to original content in recent years and has amassed more than 300 million users globally.”
  • Gone phishing: Reddit confirmed that hackers accessed its internal data in what it is calling “a sophisticated phishing attack” that targeted its employees, Carly writes. The company said the attack gave hackers access to documents and source code.
  • And, just as quickly as it came, it left: Five days ago, India banned over 90 apps, some associated with China, related to lending. Today, Manish writes that this ban on apps, like PayU’s LazyPay, Kissht, KreditBee and Indiabulls’ Home Loans, was lifted.

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Tired, Filthy, and Overworked: Inside Amazon’s Holiday Rush | WIRED

TYLER HAMILTON HAS optimized his every waking minute. Between Black Friday and Christmas, five nights a week, he pulls himself out of bed, brushes his teeth, and rushes to his car just before sunset. On his drive to the Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota, he stops at Wendy’s to buy two bourbon bacon burgers, two large chilis, fries, and a drink.

Hamilton eats the burgers as he drives and then punches in to start his shift arranging incoming product inventory just before 5 pm. In the middle of the night, he takes thirty minutes of unpaid break time and reheats the chilis. By the time he clocks out at 5:30 am, his car has frozen, so Hamilton sits huddled in the dark until it warms enough that he can drive home.

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Report: Amazon To Lay Off 10,000 Employees | Entrepreneur

Amazon became the latest technology giant that’s likely to conduct large-scale layoffs, according to the New York Times. On Monday, the outlet reported that the company planned to lay off some 10,000 people, citing “people with knowledge of the matter.”

It’s the latest post-pandemic labor rout in the tech industry. Earlier this month, Twitter laid off roughly 3,000 employees. Meta laid off over 11,000 people last week. Google, Apple, and Disney have announced plans to cut costs or slow down hiring.

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