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Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

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Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#71

Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.

Top of my wishlist is a “remove duplicates” feature that lets me see unique items for a search rather than a 100 derivations of the same thing.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#72

Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.

One thing I absolutely cannot understand is the "price range" functionality seems to be broken as well. Maybe it's the same root cause and/or change which broke price sorting but when I put in a range of say $100-$200 searching for "network switch" the first result is $240, the 2nd result $90, and the 3rd result $120 and legitimate results go on for tens of pages. So it's not that there isn't anything for sale in tha…

Probably the preferred suppliers/partners or sponsored products that are close to the asked range that show up and are prioritised

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#73
post #67

Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.

It is a human problem, there's not necessarily a technical solution. How do you define a Adidas shoe? Something with the same name could easily be fake

This isn't eBay. They have partners. They can require things from them. They can boot them if they aren't real or fake.

The problem is, they don't.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#74
Like many of the comments here, I'm very curious what counts as "R&D" spend by Amazon. My guess (and happy to be corrected if I'm wrong) is that it includes a big chunk of AWS capex spend. I think it's great that Amazon invested so much into AWS, but it then also isn't surprising that the company that runs a huge portion of the Internet has large "R&D" spend.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#75
post #28
post #2

I suspect its just a tax break related policy, ive been doing the same shit at US companies (still in EU), and some European companies (in EU) and the US one were the only one asking me to file reports for hours classified as R&D, maybe european ones have no incentive to do that Id say, considering that, and considering that for these corps taxes are lava, i’d go to look at incentives on taxes about R&D filing

Can confirm, filed some “R&D” hours at a company some years back that did software development but nothing I’d call “R&D”. They straight-up told us it was a requirement for some tax benefit or other. Like they did have us do it only on non-client work, but… it was not really R&D the way anyone means that.

Same. R&D included anything that wasn't not finished or had a roadmap that extended beyond the end of the year. In other words: unproven. If you squint that is R&D.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#76

I am really confused as to why this is considered as a tax break strategy. Operating costs directly lower earnings, where as R&D might have to be amortized over years - at least in certain european countries. Isnt this reinvesting in your business? Also spending (or donating) money lowers your taxes by lowering your earnings.

There are specific R&D tax credits in the US tax code:

https://pro.bloombergtax.com/brief/rd-tax-credit-and-deducti...

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#77
post #3

I believe Amazon classifies all costs of software engineering under R&D.

In Australia we have a tax break that means 80% of all R&D costs are repaid by the government. Everything we can ever possibly classify as R&D is classified as R&D. If I take a dump on company time it's R&D because I'm a software dev and therefore thinking about developing stuff while I'm in there.

Wait so if I'm a software dev in Australia whose hours are classified as R&D, and my employer pays a 20% tax rate, can I file my withholdings reduced by 80% too?

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have some sort of poisoned history with amzn. I just tried what you describe, and it works perfectly.

Same exact experience.

Yep, here's mine, sorted low->high: https://imgur.com/hZ2Zbx2.png

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#79
It's no surprise, Amazon market cap is > 50% of the entire country of France GDP.

  Amazon market cap: $1.6T

  France GDP:        $2.9T
These numbers would be skewed even more if Apple ($3T) or Microsoft ($3T) were used instead.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#80
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a private company is going to r&d for the benefits of their shareholders What if the R&D is open-sourced? Or what if the R&D would be for a product genuinely beneficial to people? Think a new drug, or infrastructure like Google Maps, etc.

Those are good points imho, I think If they make a profit with it, then they can also pay for it, its useful for society and society appreciate it with the money they give to it, no reason to pay for it with taxes

Some products also only make money after a long time of R&D. If you are a startup focused on such a product, R&D tax benefits are critical to keep you alive during your long development time that will require multiple rounds of investment before you can even think of making a profit.

For example, a new drug can take 10~16 years to get to the market, and this is intended by government regulations (there is often no way around it). One has to show the drug is safe and works against the intended disease, before one can sell a drug.

However, before you can even start this clinical work in humans, you must discover the drug first and optimize it through laboratory and animal testing. Only after that can you enter the clinical stage to test it in humans. Clinical stages are typically divided into phase 1/2/3 and each stage requires more time and money. After you complete all that, you can finally ask for approval to sell your drug at a profit from the government (US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)/ EU European medicine agency (EMA)).

This trajectory can typically be divided as follows: Drug Discovery (early lab testing) 2-4 years, $2-15M Preclinical Drug Development (advanced lab/animal testing) 2~3 years, $10-15M Clinical Stage 1 (First in human studies) 1~2 years $15~30M Clinical Stage 2 (medium-sized human study), 2~3 years, $40~60M Clinical Stage 3 (large, longer term human study), 2~4 years $100~300M.

Total: 9~16 years of research & development with a cost of $167~420M. Then finally you can sell the drug for a profit. If you are a startup focused solely on such development, you have no way (or very limited ways) to make money/profit in those 9-16 R&D years. In such a case, R&D tax benefits are really useful.

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