Amazon hired courier drones.

Amazon has launched delivery of orders using drones. One of these “flying couriers” was spotted in the US state of Texas.

The drone delivered the package to its destination. However, the buyer is unlikely to be happy with such delivery. The box fell from almost a 2-meter height, after which it “ran” along the path for half a meter due to a strong gust of wind.

Amazon has invested more than $1.2 billion to fight counterfeit goods.

In 2023 alone, online giant Amazon removed about 7 million counterfeit products from its platform. Within this direction, $1.2 billion was invested. The corporation has recruited more than 15 thousand employees who are involved in preventing situations related to the sale of counterfeits on Amazon.

Note that back in 2020, the company created a special unit to combat counterfeiting, which includes investigators, data analysts and even ex-federal prosecutors.

In Europe, the screws are being tightened for marketplaces.

Poland intends to tax cheap goods from China. Similar measures are being prepared in particular for AliExpress, Temu and the Shein clothing store. Previously, a tax of 10 euros per piece was introduced in France for goods from China.

Through online platforms, the European Union is literally flooded with cheap Chinese goods, which seriously undermines the position of local businesses. In addition, Polish legislators have discovered quite a few holes in the law on digital services.

Amazon in Europe began selling used items.

Online platform Hewi, which specializes in used fashion clothing, has opened a storefront on Amazon Europe. For the first time, the project will allow customers in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy to purchase fashion products on the secondary market through the marketplace.

Previously, Amazon customers in the US had access to an assortment of used accessories.

Despite the fact that Amazon is one of the largest clothing retailers, the company has not yet achieved great success in the luxury sector. In 2020, the Luxury Stores section appeared on the platform, which presents luxury brands. However, Luxury Stores did not gain popularity among buyers and suppliers because they offered a limited selection of products compared to multi-brand online stores.

Perhaps sales of used clothing from Armani, Christian Dior and other brands will do better on Amazon.

In 2023, two Russian marketplaces – Ozon and Wildberries – entered the top 10 of the world’s largest platforms by the number of active sessions for the first time. Most often, Internet users visited the American Amazon site - 4.7 billion visits per month. On Wildberries, which ranked 9th in popularity in the world, users visited an average of 343 million times a month, on Ozon (10th place) - 316 million times.

Amazon sellers will be able to create product cards using AI.

Amazon is introducing a new artificial intelligence feature for creating product cards. The AI ​​will take information from the seller's external site and then automatically generate an Amazon product card with a written description and images.

According to Amazon, the goal of the new feature is to help sellers reduce the time it takes to transfer an item from another website.

Amazon warns sellers that they must be the owner, copyright holder, or license of the content posted in the link to use this feature. The option will become available to sellers in the near future.

Amazon plans to open a special platform for goods from China.

The marketplace plans to create a special section where inexpensive goods from China will be displayed.

The company announced this on June 26 at a closed event for Chinese suppliers. According to the concept, the new section will sell unbranded clothing and lifestyle items with an estimated price of $20 or less.

According to experts, Amazon views the future section as a tool to compete with Shein and another Chinese platform, Temu. The start of accepting goods under the new model is scheduled for this fall.

Amazon fell from first place to fourth in the Brand Finance Global 500 ranking of the most valuable brands in the world.

Apple is recognized as the most valuable brand in the world. Then come Microsoft and Google. Last year, Apple dropped to second place, behind Amazon.

Russian brands were not included in the TOP 500 this year.

If you look at the US, since 2020 the Amazon marketplace has lost its position by 6%, but Apple and GAP, which pump out their own channels, have grown by an average of 5%.

In Brussels there is a store with goods from Amazon that no one took from the pickup point.

The essence of the store is that parcels are not opened and are sold packaged at a fixed price of $17.4 per 1 kg. Next is the lottery, anything can get caught: from panties to a mobile phone.

Room tour of the Amazon office in the Netherlands. In 2022, Amazon opened office space in a former prison. The prison cells were converted into office space. By the way, please note, this is a panopticon style prison. The form is such that the prisoners did not know whether they were being watched or not

Amazon caught in deceit.

At one time, the store introduced checkouts without cashiers, where you simply pick up the goods and leave, while the AI ​​algorithm and cameras independently determine what you took and then automatically charge the payment.

All this was presented under the guise of AI technology. Do you know what actually turned out to be there?

Under the hood of this high-tech gadget were a thousand low-paid Indian workers, watching cameras and checking every purchase.

Clients regularly complained about incorrect write-offs.

According to a local lawyer, Amazon violated the state's biometric identifier law, which requires companies to tell customers when they collect data for identification purposes.

“Amazon needs to explain to customers how these systems work before they enter the store so people can decide for themselves whether they want to share their body size and shape data in exchange for being able to buy a sandwich.”
he said in an interview with The Seattle Times.

As a result, Amazon decided to close the project in the spring of 2024 and switched to “smart carts” with an automatic scanner.

Wildberries can compete with foreign marketplaces and banks.

The merger of Wildberries and outdoor advertising operator Russ “to create a digital trading platform” was coordinated with the government. Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Maxim Oreshkin has been appointed curator of the project. The project is aimed at creating a competitor to the American Amazon, Alphabet, Chinese Alibaba and Japanese SoftBank. Among the goals is the promotion of Russian brands and financial instruments.

One of the directions of the project is the creation of “a payment system for payments in rubles around the world, bypassing SWIFT and the digital banking network.”

The project also involves a global offline network consisting of logistics centers, a network of stores, warehouses and offices. Geography of presence: countries of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, CIS, India and China. The target audience of the project will be enterprises in the small and medium-sized business segment.

Amazon's capitalization exceeds $2 trillion for the first time.

Thus, the company joined the group of tech giants that surpassed this mark: Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet. At the time of publication, Amazon's capitalization is $2.015 trillion.

Amazon is secretly working on a ChatGPT competitor.

The company is developing a chatbot codenamed Metis (a reference to the Greek goddess of wisdom). The basis was an Amazon model called the Olympus, a more powerful version of the publicly available Titan model.

Amazon is using Alexa's voice assistant resources to create Metis. The launch is scheduled for September, but the timing may change.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy believes Amazon's AI initiatives will "soon generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue" and "tens of billions of dollars" in sales over the next few years.

Dating launched on the TON blockchain.

This is the first selective dating service created on The Open Network blockchain. Now it has become available on Telegram. TON Dating promises users a “unique dating experience,” safe communication and the ability to monetize the time spent in the mini-application. Users will receive bonuses in Toncoin for their activity.

When registering, each community member undergoes a multi-stage identity verification. This should sweep away anonymous people and bots.

For women, subscription to TON Dating is free, for men access will be paid.

Armani and Dior factories were raided in Italy.

It turned out that the products labeled as “Made in Italy” were actually made by the Chinese.

Employees from China live and work in Italian factories illegally, receiving 2-3 euros per hour.

Amazon will stop producing Astro security robot for business.

Amazon wants to focus on its "home" version. Already sold Astro robots will stop working on September 25, 2024, Amazon called for them to be recycled. Enterprises will return the full cost of robots — $ 2,350 and will pay another $ 300.

Interestingly, the company introduced Astro for Business less than a year ago — in November 2023. It is designed for patrolling premises

5 trends in e-com in Europe.

How is e-commerce formed in Germany, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium? One of the largest European fintech companies, Mollie, surveyed almost 5,000 consumers to publish an entire e-commerce report for 2023. Mollie is a Dutch payment service, however, the conclusions relate to several European e-com markets at once.

According to the Mollie report for 2023, about 20% of European buyers will not order goods online if they are charged a refund fee if the item does not fit the style, color or size. 27% of consumers will order the product anyway. About 40% of the respondents will doubt whether it is worth overpaying.

Read more about European trends in e-com at the link.

The five major technology companies—Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Microsoft, all of which have either headquarters or offices here—are investing huge sums in the development of artificial intelligence. They estimate they are budgeting $400 billion for capital spending this year, which will primarily go toward AI hardware and research and development.

Do you know, 31 October 2023 the TON Blockchain set the world record as the fastest and most scalable blockchain.

For the test, TON rented 256 servers from Alibaba Cloud for validator nodes and launched a separate TON Blockchain network.