I’m responding to how Amazon categorizes their R&D expenditures (which is based on IRS’s definition, not the Wikipedia definition).

If we don’t understand how Amazon categorizes R&D, we can’t make a fair comparison to France.

If anything, IRS’s (very) broad definition of R&D helps France in that Amazon’s R&D spend isn’t truly R&D in the colloquial sense (or the Wikipedia definition)

In other words, Amazon’s R&D spend is likely overstated (based on what an average person would consider “R&D”)

Granted. Though see elsewhere in the comments where people talk about how overstated the French figures are.