Trump has taken some shots at Amazon (primarily b/c Bezos owns WaPo), so they have been "in the mix" w/ respect to the current political climate.
> That being said, my praise of Amazon is really more praise of Jeff Bezos. If he dies, or has a change of heart, we could be in trouble.
Also, if you read some other threads on HN, there is a strong sentiment that Bezos is "shaking down" North American cities to determine which one is most willing to bend to his will for a secondary headquarters
It's not all rainbows and ponies in AMZN land.
There's also some sentiment in the Seattle investor/business community that Amazon is using the opportunity as a threat to the city. That it's willing to expand somewhere else if the city doesn't become more friendly towards Amazon's demands/preferences. This certainly lines up well with the idea that Amazon announced a HQ2 without actually naming a city, leaving the media buzz and PR to influence the city of Seattle.
Though these are all rumblings I've heard and should be taken with a grain of salt.
[citation needed]
It would seem you missed the part about their studio chief being suspended for sexual harassment.
I mean they still probably have too much power, but more in the sense of Walmart in the 1990’s. Amazon might be a monopoly, but at least they don’t undermine democracy (yet). Google as I am typing this is undermining the electorate.
That being said, my praise of Amazon is really more praise of Jeff Bezos. If he dies, or has a change of heart, we could be in trouble.
Also these partnerships mean nothing. I remember at Oracle an exec telling us how many “partnerships” he announced with Apple/Samsung/whatever at SAP. They whole point of the partnership wasn’t to “collaborate”, it was to release a press release. What do people think happens in the end?? That the most brilliant engineers of each company fly to a secret location, get into a room, and then diagram (“ideate!”) a solution on a whiteboard like it’s an episode of Numbers or Law and Order: Criminal Intent??