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.

Pavel Durov praises the hamster and promises to be listing on TON.

"Hamster Kombat has become the latest Internet phenomenon everyone's talking about. 239 million people have signed up for this Telegram mini app in just 3 months.

📈 It took Hamster only 73 days to reach 100 million monthly users. Each day, 4-5 million new users join Hamster Kombat, making it the fastest-growing digital service in the world.

As I said a few months back, a new wave of mini apps on Telegram is coming, and Hamster Kombat is now leading the pack. Its amazing growth shows the viral potential of the Telegram mini app platform.

Soon, Hamster’s team will mint its token on TON, introducing the benefits of blockchain to hundreds of millions of people. A new era is arriving, and we are witnessing its arrival in real time", - Pavel Durov said.

Meanwhile, in Russia, massagers for hamsters are being bought on marketplaces.

Amazon wants to get buyers of both luxury and ultra-low-cost goods.

In addition to its minority stake in Saks Global following Hudson's Bay's purchase of Neiman Marcus, Amazon plans to compete with Temu PDD Holdings Inc. and Chinese fast fashion giant Shein Group Ltd. with the help of a new store selling ultra-cheap goods.

A stake in Saks Global gives the US platform access to the luxury sector, where Bloomberg estimates it could be more successful than competing with Temu and Shein on their turf.

Toncoin has become the eighth largest project in the entire cryptocurrency.

With hundreds of millions of users, Telegram's TON, also known as The Open Network, is gaining momentum in simple, addictive and fun blockchain-based games. There are currently 500 million users on the TON network, according to the foundation. With a current market capitalization of $19.4 billion, Toncoin has become the eighth largest project in the entire cryptocurrency, overtaking pillars such as Polkadot, Cardano and NEAR.

How not to fall for the tricks of scammers in TON and Telegram.

Since the TON and Telegram ecosystem is rapidly gaining popularity, and now more than 38 million accounts are active, the increased interest carries with it great risks. Scammers and intruders are targeting the influx of new, inexperienced users, seeking to use the work done by TON and Telegram to make cryptocurrency accessible to everyone.

Although cryptocurrency offers exciting opportunities, it is important to keep in mind the potential risks, even in the most secure ecosystems. The most common fraud schemes and ways to protect against them - read here.

What are the most popular games on TON?

The TON blockchain has quickly turned into a dynamic ecosystem for decentralized gaming, featuring many modern games.

Let's take a look at some of the most popular examples defining gameplay in TON.

✅ Notcoin : A click-and-earn game that allows players to earn tokens by clicking
✅ Catizen : A Play-to-Airdrop game in which players breed cats to earn $Cats tokens.
✅ Fanton Fantasy Football: A "Play and Earn" game in which players assemble football teams and receive rewards.

Mercari will start accepting Bitcoin.

The Japanese e-commerce platform Mercari this summer allowed users to buy goods presented on flea market applications using bitcoin.

Bitcoin transactions are carried out through the Melcoin subsidiary crypto exchange located in Tokyo. The prices of the goods are displayed in Japanese yen, but payment will be possible in Bitcoin. Sellers will receive the paid bitcoins in the local fiat currency. Mercari is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Japan and has already introduced cryptocurrency to its platform through the Mercari Bitcoin cryptocurrency trading service and loyalty program.

Japan is a country that supports cryptocurrencies and has more flexible rules for dealing with them, which allows companies such as Mercari and Rakuten to actively implement cryptocurrencies on their platforms.

TON Storage Marketplace: an open ecosystem for everyone.

On the TON Storage platform, any participant can act as a host, providing their own disk space to store files of other users. This contributes to the formation of an open and competitive data storage market, where everyone can choose the most suitable offer in terms of price/quality ratio.