In two decades, Amazon has exploded into one of the most successful juggernauts in history, pushing forward with no apparent limit to its horizons, including this week in high-end computer chips. But his path has become decidedly more bruised, overwhelmed by a wave of public recriminations in the United States and Europe.
Because matter: While marching from industry to industry, Amazon has become a bigger target with more dangerous enemies. "Any regulator who does not have an eye on Amazon is not doing his job," says Timothy Wu, author of "The Curse of Bigness".
The big picture: In the biggest couple of years of Amazon still, it has briefly exceeded $ 1 trillion in value, only the second company to ever do it. He came across groceries, pharmaceuticals and parcel delivery. He has completed one of the most successful public relations campaigns of all time, capturing more than a year of rapt attention globally for what was simply a search for added office space. And yesterday he unveiled a new chip for the application of artificial intelligence.
- One of Amazon's biggest games of all is the cloud, where he was a forerunner, giving him a formidable position alongside Microsoft and IBM.
- In a note to customers Yesterday, after Amazon's announcement, Jefferies Brent Thill analyst said his cloud business could double more in 2022, at $ 350 billion, from about $ 130 billion today. The current Amazon market capitalization is $ 818 billion.
But all this high-profile the activity has a cost:
Break Amazon?
Critics argue that while Amazon quickly offered cheap goods, it also worked backwards after business and contributed to the national epidemic of relatively low and flat wages. Some say society should be divided.
As previously mentioned, analysts have hypothesized that Amazon's decision to place a massive new office complex in the D.C. area. was partly driven by a strategy to prevent anti-trust activism.
- In September, Mark May, a retail store Citi analyst, said that Amazon should consider the possibility of pre-splitting its retail and cloud activities to prevent any regulatory threat.
But, but, but: Thill, analyst Jefferies, tells Axios that he does not perceive any real danger of forced rupture. Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, told CNBC that AWS has no plans to start operations.
Work disorders
Black Friday and Cyber Monday, GMB, a union in the United Kingdom, have organized protests against the 24 Amazon warehouses in the country for dangerous working conditions, as supervisors require an increasingly faster job. Their motto was "we are not robots". And even the workers of Amazon in three other European countries – Italy, Germany and Spain – have gone out.
Discontent is also in the United StatesIn Minnesota, workers of Somali origin in an Amazon warehouse have entered into negotiations with the company after protests of their working conditions, reports Karen Weise of the New York Times. "Amazon ended up becoming a flashpoint and a symbol for inequality in modern society," says Beth Gutelius of the Great Cities Institute of the University of Chicago, tells Axios.
- In the last three years, says Michael Rix, a GMB consultant, the ambulances have been called about 600 times in Amazon's warehouses.
- The accidents went from respiratory problems to abortions.
- "The expectations that they are coming down to the warehouse floor, they are actually dependent on the workers themselves ", says Gutelius to Axios.
In the United States, a worker from Whole Foods who did not want to be identified told Axios that the organizational efforts were resumed after Amazon's announcement, two weeks ago, that it would build giant new office complexes in New York and northern Virginia. "I have personally seen a lot of Amazon organization groups popping up in the last month, and we are all trying to coordinate," the worker said.
- In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson "The safety and well-being of our employees is our number one priority: Amazon has activities all over the world and we deeply value our connection with the communities we are in. Each community is a little different and each , we work to ensure our employees a great experience with the most important element represented by our direct connection with our employees ".