Amazon buys self-driving company Zoox. The Everything Store is paying about $1.2 billion to acquire the startup, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Reports of a possible deal had first surfaced a month ago, also in The Journal. Amazon is thought to be interested in self-driving technologies as a way to one day automate its delivery fleet, but for now ,Zoox says Amazon will help roll out the self-driving taxi service it's been developing. Amazon has previously made minority investments in self-driving truck company Rivian Automotive and self-driving company Aurora Innovation, which also is now working on a self-driving truck. Tesla's Elon Musk used the Zoox acquisition as an opportunity to try to troll Jeff Bezos, accusing him on Twitter of being a "copy cat." It is the latest example of Musk's displeasure with Amazon, which he has called a "monopoly" that should be broken up.
A sign that Big Tech may not be done with offices after all: Amazon is planning to add 3.5k corporate jobs across 6 major US cities.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-parler-aws Amazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service Amazon's suspension of Parler's account means that unless it can find another host, once the ban takes effect on Sunday Parler will go offline.
All grown up:Some of Amazon’s most successful3rd-partysellers have been able to go public. Anker (electronics) is valued at $10B while Mohawk Group (home-products seller) is valued at $870m+.
Shots fired:Amazon acquired Selz, a Shopify competitor that helps small businesses build online shops.