This is your host, The Badger, providing you with the top Amazon news stories this week. Welcome to Amazon Weekly Digest!
This week, the dating app Tinder, gets called out by a California appeals court for being discriminatory to users above 30, Black History Month begins, and Amazon partnered with a handful of other companies to launch a new healthcare company.
The goal of the new healthcare company is to provide employees with affordable health care free from incentivizing profit and constraints. Together the three companies (Berkshire Hathway, JPMorgan Chase, and Amazon) creating the new healthcare company employ more than 950,000 people worldwide. They hope to combine their company’s resources and tackle the complex healthcare system.
Other Amazon news includes:
One step away from employing robots, Amazon gains a patent for wristbands to track and guide employee’s hands to specific packages and shelves using radio frequencies.
Gay-rights activists started a campaign to sway Amazon away from building HQ2 in a state that does not protect sexual orientation discrimination. Nine out of the 20 finalist cities have no anti-gay-discrimination laws.
Forbes estimates 2.3 million jobs will be affected by Amazon Go, translating into nearly $37 billion in potentially lost income nationwide. This is all hypothetical, right?
Economists are banding together to urge cities to curb tax breaks and other incentives they’re offering to bring Amazon’s second headquarters. Top economists are saying these incentives are wasteful and counterproductive.
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