While its second bricks-and-mortar bookstore isn’t expected to open until later this summer, Amazon is already looking toward a future with more physical stores, as well as a beefed-up online presence through its subscription Prime service. [More]
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7 Products By The Biggest Tech Companies That Failed Miserably
By 5.17.16
Hearing the news that Google is taking another stab at social media with a new group-chatting app dubbed “Spaces” may feel like deja vu for anyone paying attention to the tech giant’s previous, mostly unsuccessful efforts to gain traction in the social media world with Google+. But Google isn’t the only big name in the tech world that’s tried and failed to popularize a new tech product, not by a long shot. [More]
Amazon Launches Restaurant Delivery Service In New York City, Just Not All Of It
By 5.17.16
After launching its restaurant delivery service in Seattle and Los Angeles in the last year, Amazon has finally added New York City to the list, though only to certain areas in Manhattan. Amazon Restaurants provide food deliveries from more than 350 restaurants to people in Chelsea, Harlem, and the Financial District. Members of Amazon’s $99/year subscription program can view participating restaurants, browse menus, place orders and track the status of their delivery. [Amazon] [More]
Amazon Planning To Sell Groceries, Diapers Under Its Private Label
By 5.16.16
From your closet to your pantry and everything in between, Amazon will soon have something to sell under its own private label: after making a recent foray into the fashion world with in-house clothing brands, the e-commerce giant is going to start peddling its own line of food and diapers. [More]
“Chirp” Is Google’s Answer To Amazon Echo; Could Be In Your Home Later This Year
By 5.12.16
The Amazon Echo can do just about everything — order pizza, pay your credit card bill, and answer all your spur-of-the-moment questions, among other things — but can it compete with other connected home speakers? That’s something Google is poised to find out with its own connected-device that could launch later this year. [More]
Walmart Testing Two-Day Delivery Subscription Service
By 5.12.16
It’s finally time: Walmart is officially ready to take on Amazon’s $99/year two-day shipping service, Prime, by knocking off a delivery day and a dollar from its own ShippingPass subscription service. [More]
Amazon Launches Its Own YouTube-Like Service: Amazon Video Direct
By 5.10.16
Amazon already squares off against Netflix and iTunes in the streaming video subscription and rental marketplaces, so it’s probably not a shock that Amazon now has YouTube in its sights with a new platform for amateur moviemakers called Amazon Direct Video. [More]
Amazon Now Expanding Same-Day Delivery To All ZIP Codes In 27 Cities
By 5.6.16
Two weeks after being called out for omitting ZIP codes with predominantly non-white residents from its same-day delivery service, Amazon is now pledging to cover those areas in all the markets where it offers the expedited delivery option. [More]
Oculus Suggests Bereft Rift Pre-Orderers Should Go To Best Buy Instead
By 5.2.16
Oculus began accepting pre-orders for their Rift virtual reality headsets back in January, but not everyone who ordered early has their device yet. Those customers will probably be disappointed to hear that Oculus is going ahead with its retail strategy. Some devices will be available for retail sale at Microsoft stores and from Amazon on Friday, May 6, and available for special demos and for sale at a few Best Buy locations on Saturday, May 7. [More]
Amazon’s Alexa Now Available On A Device That Isn’t The Echo Speaker
By 4.28.16
Alexa is spreading her personal assistant wings. The Amazon Echo mainstay is now available on its first device not produced by Amazon: the Triby, a connected message board of sorts for your home, office, or other destination. [More]
Amazon Found Liable For Unfairly Billing Parents For Kids’ In-App Purchases
By 4.27.16
There’s a time-tested rule that if someone gives a child an easy way to unwittingly spend your money, you will soon be looking at a thick bill containing a large number of tiny purchases. Today, a federal court ruled that Amazon failed to do enough to alert Kindle Fire owners — and users of Amazon’s Android appstore — that “Free” apps could still allow kids to make costly in-app transactions. [More]
Amazon To Expand Same-Day Prime Delivery To All Of Boston… Eventually
By 4.27.16
Free same-day delivery is a nice perk that millions of Amazon Prime customers in and near major cities nationwide have access to. But not all access is created equal, as a recent investigation found out, and the map of who was being excluded has some unpleasant undertones. In Boston at least, the city with the most obvious delivery hole, Amazon is now changing its tune and will expand service to all residents. [More]
Amazon Sues Five Sites Promising Reviews For Cash
By 4.26.16
Since filing its first lawsuit to block companies from selling fraudulent positive reviews last April, Amazon has taken a number of steps to cutback on the number of fake review peppering its site: data mining reviewers’ personal relationships, tweaking how reviews appear on product pages, and suing more than 1,100 individual reviewers who sell their kind words. Now the e-commerce giant has sued five additional sites, accusing them of selling sham reviews. [More]
Amazon Makes Some Games Only Available On Prime, But Good Luck Guessing Which Ones
By 4.25.16
Amazon Prime started out a few years back as a way for power users to save on quick shipping. These days, it sometimes feels instead like Amazon is crawling one inch at a time toward a Costco-style membership-only future behind the Prime gates. The latest goods to move behind the velvet rope? A bunch of big-name video games. [More]
Amazon Stays On Trend, Closes Flash Sale Site Myhabit.com
By 4.21.16
Flash sale fashion sites were a hot retail category during the recession, when high-end retailers had lots of inventory to get rid of. They proliferated, the bubble burst, with big players like Fab, Gilt, and Zulily all acquired by larger companies. Amazon started its own flash-sale site for fashion, MyHabit.com, in 2011 when the category was still growing, but announced that the site will close in May, just as Amazon is working to sell more of its own private-label and other brands’ clothing. [More]
In 6 Cities, Amazon Same-Day Delivery Available In More White ZIP Codes Than Black Ones
By 4.21.16
Effective same-day delivery is kind of the holy grail of online retail right now: being able to get your hands on that thing you need right now when you need it is the one advantage brick-and-mortar stores still have, and it’s the one Amazon in particular wants to chip away at. The list of cities where Amazon promises Prime subscribers access to same-day delivery keeps getting longer, but there’s a snag: not all addresses within a city are considered equal, and the pattern to the areas without access looks distressingly familiar. [More]
Amazon Unintentionally Paying Scammers To Hand You 1000 Pages Of Crap You Don’t Read
By 4.20.16
For a certain kind of reader — the kind who can go through three books a week easy on her commute, let’s say — an unlimited subscription, wireless, e-book service sounds like a dream come true. That’s what Amazon promises with their Kindle Unlimited service, but the plan may be backfiring — not so much on readers, but on authors and on Amazon itself. [More]
You’re Not Supposed To Receive Amazon Orders In Walmart And Sam’s Club Boxes
By 4.20.16
Buying an item on Amazon’s site doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily buying that item from Amazon. This can lead to serious confusion when you try to make a warranty claim, and seriously confuses some customers when a box from Walmart shows up on their doorstep with their Amazon order. Why would that happen? If a box from a different retailer shows up on your doorstep, it means that your seller is playing the retail arbitrage game and breaking Amazon’s rules. [More]
