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Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

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Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#41

Post by fortythirteen »

amb23 wrote: post #20
iagooar wrote: post #13

Bezos: Alexa, buy me a city, we need new headquarters. Alexa: City acquired. It's so crazy to see a company make cities apply for hosting them, instead of them applying for space in a city. But I guess that given the size of Amazon, it's actually worth more than most cities in the world anyway...

It's all about tax breaks. This is a blatant attempt by Amazon to get years of taxes abated in order to provide the increased regional economic benefit of... doing exactly what they'd do anyways if they didn't get the break. US city and state then competes against other US cities and states in a battle to provide the larger tax break. It's an odious practice in my opinion, and I wish lawmakers would do something to c…

It's not that one sided, and I think you're missing a key component here. 50k decent paying jobs means more money in the local economy to be returned through sales and property taxes. Plus, having Amazon put a headquarters in your town gives it a status that attracts other companies, who don't have the muscle to demand such huge incentives.

I'm not a fan of Amazon's business practices, by any means, but they are correctly using their assets here.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#43

Post by dandare »

cabalamat wrote: post #39
bshimmin wrote: post #8

It always amuses me how stunningly bad Amazon really is at making standalone pages on their web site. This one is totally unresponsive, has images for headings, and a slightly blurry image for the table. Here's Amazon Locker, which is even more dismal: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Click-and-Collect-with-Amazon-Locke... I guess they must have to produce all this stuff within the constraints of their CMS, but it really doe…

> totally unresponsive You mean it's not weighed down with tons of JavaShit and annoying transition effects?

They still serve you the product carousel at the bottom of the post.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#44

Post by outoftacos »

jpatokal wrote: post #24

The RFP is rather more interesting than the marketing page: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/Anything... The 2nd criterion is basically the total amount of sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars available to subsidize them: Please provide a summary of total incentives offered for the Project by the state/province and local community. In this summary, please provide a brief description of the incentive item,…

So boldly demanding massive amounts of corporate welfare is not only considered acceptable, but just done out in the open like this by one of the most massive and powerful corporations of all time. Nobody even pretends like there is any other option any more.

It's disgusting. When are the employees of these companies going to start calling bullshit on this? Apparently nobody else will.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#45

Post by trevyn »

obstacle1 wrote: post #29
kohanz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kitchener-Waterloo? edit: just thought it would be a suitable talent hub. Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. Maybe Toronto would be more suitable?

Wouldn't really make sense, an HQ would need to be in an actual city, not a sprawling suburban bedroom community. Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal.

The RFP explicitly states that they prefer "Metropolitan areas with more than one million people", but that the site does not have to be "An urban or downtown campus".

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#46

Post by jasode »

I think we can assume that Jeff Bezos saw how Elon Musk played the game in 2014 to find a location for Tesla's GigaFactory.[1][2][3]

The upcoming stories for Amazon's high-profile decision will probably play out in a similar way. However, the particular candidate cities probably won't be the same since Elon was building a site for factory workers whereas Jeff is building a campus for more software developers. Therefore, a location like Austin with U.Texas compsci students to recruit is more important for Amazon HQ2 than a Gigafactory.

The desire to attract tech employers like Amazon appears to be more competitive than winning the bid to host the Olympic Games.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-ingeniously-man...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2014/02/27/the...

[3] google results of similar stories: https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+bidding+nevada+texas

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#48

Post by samsolomon »

cabalamat wrote: post #39
bshimmin wrote: post #8

It always amuses me how stunningly bad Amazon really is at making standalone pages on their web site. This one is totally unresponsive, has images for headings, and a slightly blurry image for the table. Here's Amazon Locker, which is even more dismal: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Click-and-Collect-with-Amazon-Locke... I guess they must have to produce all this stuff within the constraints of their CMS, but it really doe…

> totally unresponsive You mean it's not weighed down with tons of JavaShit and annoying transition effects?

Most responsive sites use media queries which involve CSS, not JavaScript.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#49

Post by Pxtl »

obstacle1 wrote: post #29
kohanz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kitchener-Waterloo? edit: just thought it would be a suitable talent hub. Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. Maybe Toronto would be more suitable?

Wouldn't really make sense, an HQ would need to be in an actual city, not a sprawling suburban bedroom community. Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal.

KW is not a bedroom community. It's sprawling, yes, but it's too far from Toronto to function as a bedroom community. KW stands on its own.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#50

Post by obstacle1 »

Pxtl wrote: post #49
obstacle1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't really make sense, an HQ would need to be in an actual city, not a sprawling suburban bedroom community. Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal.

KW is not a bedroom community. It's sprawling, yes, but it's too far from Toronto to function as a bedroom community. KW stands on its own.

Sorry, you're absolutely right. I misspoke about it being a bedroom community.
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