Warren gets $1.4 million to help local cloud infrastructure providers compete against Amazon and other giants

Started as a side project by its founders, Warren is now helping regional cloud infrastructure service providers compete against Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google and other tech giants. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, Warren’s self-service distributed cloud platform is gaining traction in Southeast Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud service markets, and Europe. It recently closed a $1.4 million seed round led by Passion Capital, with plans to expand in South America, where it recently launched in Brazil.

Warren’s seed funding also included participation from Lemonade Stand and angel investors like former Nokia vice president Paul Melin and Marek Kiisa, co-founder of funds Superangel and NordicNinja.

The leading global cloud providers are aggressively expanding their international businesses by growing their marketing teams and data centers around the world (for example, over the past few months, Microsoft has launched a new data center region in Austria, expanded in Brazil and announced it will build a new region in Taiwan as it competes against Amazon Web Services).

But demand for customized service and control over data still prompt many companies, especially smaller ones, to pick local cloud infrastructure providers instead, Warren co-founder and chief executive officer Tarmo Tael told TechCrunch.

AWS remains in firm control of the cloud infrastructure market

“Local providers pay more attention to personal sales and support, in local language, to all clients in general, and more importantly, take the time to focus on SME clients to provide flexibility and address their custom needs,” he said. “Whereas global providers give a personal touch maybe only to a few big clients in the enterprise sectors.” Many local providers also offer lower prices and give a large amount of bandwidth for free, attracting SMEs.

He added that “the data sovereignty aspect that plays an important role in choosing their cloud platform for many of the clients.”

In 2015, Tael and co-founder Henry Vaaderpass began working on the project that eventually became Warren while running a development agency for e-commerce sites. From the beginning, the two wanted to develop a product of their own and tested several ideas out, but weren’t really excited by any of them, he said. At the same time, the agency’s e-commerce clients were running into challenges as their businesses grew.

Tael and Vaaderpass’s clients tended to pick local cloud infrastructure providers because of lower costs and more personalized support. But setting up new e-commerce projects with scalable infrastructure was costly because many local cloud infrastructure providers use different platforms.

“So we started looking for tools to use for managing our e-commerce projects better and more efficiently,” Tael said. “As we didn’t find what we were looking for, we saw this as an opportunity to build our own.”

After creating their first prototype, Tael and Vaaderpass realized that it could be used by other development teams, and decided to seek angel funding from investors, like Kiisa, who have experience working with cloud data centers or infrastructure providers.

Southeast Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud markets, is an important part of Warren’s business. Warren will continue to expand in Southeast Asia, while focusing on other developing regions with large domestic markets, like South America (starting with Brazil). Tael said the startup is also in discussion with potential partners in other markets, including Russia, Turkey and China.

Warren’s current clients include Estonian cloud provider Pilw.io and Indonesian cloud provider IdCloudHost. Tael said working with Warren means its customers spend less time dealing with technical issues related to infrastructure software, so their teams, including developers, can instead focus on supporting clients and managing other services they sell.

The company’s goal is to give local cloud infrastructure providers the ability to meet increasing demand, and eventually expand internationally, with tools to handle more installations and end users. These include features like automated maintenance and DevOps processes that streamline feature testing and handling different platforms.

Ultimately, Warren wants to connect providers in a network that end users can access through a single API and user interface. It also envisions the network as a community where Warren’s clients can share resources and, eventually, have a marketplace for their apps and services.

In terms of competition, Tael said local cloud infrastructure providers often turn to OpenStack, Virtuozzo, Stratoscale or Mirantis. The advantage these companies currently have over Warren is a wider network, but Warren is busy building out its own. The company will be able to connect several locations to one provider by the first quarter of 2021. After that, Tael said, it will “gradually connect providers to each other, upgrading our user management and billing services to handle all that complexity.”

APAC cloud infrastructure revenue reaches $9B in Q2 with Amazon leading the way

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/01/warren-gets-1-4-million-to-help-local-cloud-infrastructure-providers-compete-against-the-giants/

South Korean startup Cochlear.ai raises $2 million Series A to detect the sounds missed by speech recognition

Sit quietly for a moment and pay attention to the different sounds around you. You might hear appliances beeping, cars honking, a dog barking, someone sneezing. These are all noises Cochlear.ai, a Seoul-based sound recognition startup, is training its SaaS platform to identify. The company’s goal is to develop software that can identify almost any kind of sound and be used in a wide range of smart hardware, including phones, speakers and cars, co-founder and chief executive Yoonchang Han told TechCrunch.

Cochlear.ai announced it has raised $2 million in Series A funding, led by Smilegate Investment, with participation from Shinhan Capital and NAU IB Capital. This brings its total funding so far to $2.7 million, including a seed round from Kakao Ventures, the investment arm of the South Korean internet giant. Cochlear.ai will use its Series A on hiring over the next 18 months and to increase the data set of sounds used to train its deep learning algorithms.

The company was founded in 2017 by a team of six music and audio research scientists, including Han, who completed his PhD in music information retrieval at Seoul National University. While working on his doctorate, Han found “that everyone was really focusing on speech recognition systems. There are so many companies for that, but analyzing other kinds of sounds are technically quite different from speech recognition.”

Speech recognition technology usually recognizes one or two voices at a time, and assumes that people are engaging in a conversation, instead of talking over one another. It also uses linguistic knowledge in post-processing to increase accuracy. But with music or environmental noises, different types of sounds usually overlap.

Voice assistants don’t work for kids: The problem with speech recognition in the classroom

“We have to take care about all different frequency ranges, and there are not only voices, but really thousands of sounds out there,” Han said. “So we think this will be the next generation of sound recognition, and that was the motivation for our startup.”

Cochlear.ai’s SaaS, called Cochl.Sense, is available as a cloud API and edge SDK, and can currently detect about 40 different sounds, which are grouped into three categories: emergency detection (including glass breaking, screaming and sirens), human interaction (which includes using finger snaps, claps or whistles to interact with hardware) and human status (to identify sounds like coughing, sneezing or snoring for use cases like patient monitoring or automatic audio captioning).

Han said the company also plans to add new functionality to Cochl.Sense for use in homes (including smart speakers), vehicles and music analysis. Cochl.Sense’s flexibility means it can potentially fit many use cases, including turning a smart speaker into a “control tower” for home appliances by detecting the noises they make, or helping hearing impaired people by sending alerts about noises, like car horns, to wearable devices including smart watches.

The sound recognition landscape

Han notes that over the past three years or so, there has been a shift from focusing on speech recognition technology to other sounds as well.

For example, more major tech companies, like Amazon, Google and Apple, are adding context-aware sound recognition to their products. For example, both Amazon Alexa Guard and Nest Secure detect the sound of glass breaking, while iOS 14’s sound recognition enabled it to add new accessibility features.

Han said the launches by major tech companies is a boon for Cochlear.ai, because it means that the market for sound recognition technology is growing. The startup plans to work with many different industries, but is currently focused on smart consumer devices and automotive because that is where the most interest for its software is coming from. For example, Cochlear.ai is currently working on a project with Daimler AG to include its sound recognition in cars (for example, alerts if a child is locked inside), in addition to collaborations with major electronic, telecommunications and consumer good companies.

Software that can identify sounds like gunshots, glass breaking and other noises for emergency detection has been around for decades, but conventional technology often resulted in false alarms or required the use of specific microphones and other hardware, Han said.

Other companies dedicated to improving sound recognition technology include Cambridge, England’s Audio Analytica, which focuses on context-based sound intelligence, and Netherlands-based Sound Intelligence, which develops software for emergency alert and healthcare systems.

Cochlear.ai plans to differentiate by building software that can be used with a wide array of microphones, including in low-end smartphones or USB microphones, without needing to be fine-tuned, instead relying on deep learning to refine its algorithms and reduce false positives.

iOS 14 lets deaf users set alerts for important sounds, among other clever accessibility perks

During the early stages of building a data set for a specific sound, Cochlear.ai’s team records many audio samples by themselves, using older smartphone models and USB microphones, to ensure that their software will work even without high-quality microphones.

Other samples are gathered from online sources. Once the sound’s initial learning model reaches a certain level of accuracy, it is then able to search online by itself for more of the same kind of audio clips, exponentially increasing the speed of data training. Cochlear.ai’s Series A will enable it to build data sets of audio samples more quickly, allowing it to add more sounds to its software.

“All of our co-founders are researchers in this field, so signal processing and machine learning techniques — we are trying many different algorithms, because every sound has different characteristics,” said Han. “We have to try many different things to make one single model that can identify all different sounds.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/15/south-korean-startup-cochlear-ai-raises-2-million-series-a-to-detect-the-sounds-missed-by-speech-recognition/

Japanese startup Nature launches Remo 3, its home appliance smart remote, in the US and Canada

Nature, a Japanese hardware startup that focuses on IoT home devices, announced the launch of Remo 3, its home appliance smart remote, in the United States and Canada today. Priced at $129, the Bluetooth-enabled Remo 3 allows people to control with their smartphones or smart speakers multiple appliances that use an infrared remote, including air conditioners, TVs, robot vacuum cleaners and fans.

Nature claims that its Remo series is Japan’s top smart remote, with more than 200,000 units sold so far. The Remo 3, designed to be mounted on a wall, also has sensors for temperature, humidity, lighting and movement, allowing users to create customized settings for when they want devices to turn on or shut off. Remo 3’s app also has a GPS location feature, so appliances can turn on automatically as users get closer to their homes.

As COVID-19 forces people to spend more time at home than usual, many are embarking on home improvement projects.

Even though people may be reluctant to purchase new appliances because of the economic downturn, relatively inexpensive products like the Remo 3 may still attract buyers because it can help reduce energy consumed by devices they already own. The Remo 3 also adds another layer of functionality to smart speakers and before the pandemic, global smart speaker sales hit a record high last year, with 146.9 million units shipped. The Remo 3 is compatible with Amazon smart speakers like the Echo Dot, as well as Google Home and Apple HomePod speakers.

Nature founder and chief executive Haruumi Shiode told TechCrunch that Nature conducted a pilot with Kansai Electric, one of the largest utility providers in Japan, to prove that it can lower the amount of electricity used by air conditioners. He added that the pandemic actually accelerated sales of Nature Remo devices in Japan and prompted the company’s decision to launch in the U.S.

The COVID-19 pandemic made mass-producing the Remo 3 more challenging because Nature’s team was no longer able to make monthly trips to Shenzhen, Shiode said. But the Remo 3 is the sixth product Nature has launched so far, so it was able to figure out how to work with factories remotely on production and quality assurance.

“I read that since the pandemic started, 70% of Americans are tackling home improvement projects,” Shiode added. “Similarly, people around the world have been looking for ways to make their shelter-in-place less mundane and more convenient. With the Nature Remo 3, we hope to offer the same convenience and efficiencies to the American market as we have in Japan.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/23/japanese-startup-nature-launches-remo-3-its-home-appliance-smart-remote-in-the-u-s-and-canada/

AI-based customer engagement platform iKala raises $17 million to expand in Southeast Asia

Taiwanese startup iKala, which offers an artificial intelligence-based customer acquisition and engagement platform, will expand into new Southeast Asian markets after raising a $17 million Series B. The round was led by Wistron Digital Technology Holding Company, the investment arm of the electronics manufacturer, with participation from returning investors Hotung Investment Holdings Limited and Pacific Venture Partners. It brings iKala’s total raised so far to $30.3 million.

The new funding will be used to launch in Indonesia and Malaysia, and expand in markets where iKala already operates, including Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. Wistron Digital Technology Holding Company, which also offers big data analytics, will serve as a strategic investor, and this also marks the Taiwanese firm’s entry into Southeast Asia.

IKala’s products are targeted toward e-commerce companies, and include KOL Radar, for influencer marketing, and Shoplus, a social commerce service focused on Southeast Asian markets.

In a statement about the funding, iKala board member Lee-feng Chien, former managing director at Google Taiwan, said, “Taiwan has an excellent reputation for having some of the best high-tech talents in both hardware and software around the region. With Wistron as a strategic partner, iKala can become a major driving force for transforming Taiwan into an AI industry and talent hub in Asia.”

While Taiwan’s technology industry is best-known for hardware, especially semiconductor manufacturers like Foxconn and TSMC, a new crop of startups are helping the country establish a reputation for AI prowess.

In addition to iKala, these include Appier, which also provides a customer analytics, and enterprise translation platform WritePath. Big American tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have also set up AI-focused research and development centers in Taiwan, drawing on the country’s engineering talent and government programs.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/19/ikala-an-ai-based-customer-engagement-platform-raises-17-million-to-expand-in-southeast-asia/

Amazon Air adds 12 new aircraft to its cargo fleet, expands its ground operations

Amazon announced today it has added 12 new cargo aircraft to Amazon Air, bringing its total fleet to more than 80 aircraft, in part because of increased demand for shipments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The converted Boeing 767-300 were leased from the Air Transport Services Group. Amazon said one of the planes will begin transporting cargo this month, and the rest will be delivered next year.

The company is also expanding Amazon Air’s ground network, starting this month with regional air hubs at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin, Texas and Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, then Lakeland Linder International Airport in Florida this summer, and San Bernadino International Airport next year. It will also open a new central Amazon Air Hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport next year.

In the announcement, Amazon Global Air vice president Sarah Rhoads said, “Amazon Air is critical to ensuring fast delivery for our customers—both in the current environment we are facing, and beyond.”

Amazon launched its branded cargo planes in 2016 to increase the speed of deliveries, and decrease its reliance on third-party logistics providers. For example, last year, Amazon expanded Amazon Air after FedEx announced it was ending its express delivery contract with the company.

Many Americans under shelter-in-place orders are relying on Amazon for online orders, and the company has brought on 175,000 temporary workers to meet demand related to the pandemic, about 125,000 of whom will be moved to full-time roles this month.

But the company has also come under scrutiny for the safety of its workforce. As of the end of last month, eight Amazon warehouse workers had died from COVID-19. The company has not disclosed how many of its workers have tested positive for the virus, though it says it enforces social distancing measures and alerts other people at a facility if a coworker tests positive for COVID-19. A coalition of 13 state attorney generals have called on Amazon to bolster protections for workers.

In a letter to Amazon, 13 AGs call for increased transparency and stronger worker protections

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/04/amazon-air-adds-12-new-aircraft-to-its-cargo-fleet-expands-its-ground-operations/

Amazon withdraws from MWC over coronavirus-related concerns

Amazon is the latest company to cancel its plans for the Mobile World Congress, which will take place later this month in Barcelona, over coronavirus-related concerns.

In a statement emailed to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson said “due to the outbreak and continued concerns about novel coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020, scheduled for Feb. 24-27 in Barcelona, Spain.”

Other companies that have cancelled or scaled back their plans for MWC due to the outbreak include LG, NVIDIA and Ericsson. The event’s organizer, GSMA, recently issued a new statement about precautions it is taking, including a ban on visitors from Hubei province, where the epidemic is believed to have begun.

As top exhibitors pull out of MWC, organizers implement stringent safeguards

 

The vast majority of people affected by coronavirus are in China, where there have been 908 deaths and 40,171 confirmed infections, as of the time this article was posted. The outbreak has also led to a wave of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia across the world.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/09/amazon-withdraws-from-mwc-over-coronavirus-related-concerns/

Amazon’s third-party merchants are now barred from using FedEx Ground for Prime shipments

Third-party vendors were told by Amazon over the weekend that they are barred from using FedEx’s ground delivery services for Prime shipments. The Wall Street Journal reports that a message sent by Amazon to merchants on Sunday said the ban will last “until the delivery performance of these ship methods improves.” The e-commerce platform will still allow FedEx Ground for non-Prime shipments and FedEx Express, a faster but pricier option, for Prime.

Third-party sellers now account for more than half the products sold on Amazon.com and the company’s decision on FedEx’s ground delivery comes during the peak of the holiday shopping season. Over the summer, FedEx ended partnerships with Amazon to provide it with express air deliveries and ground shipments.

An Amazon spokesperson said that the company is managing cutoffs for delivery by Christmas and want to ensure that customers receive their packages on time. TechCrunch has also contacted FedEx for comment.

Both FedEx and UPS both experienced recent shipping delays, which they said were caused by record shipping volumes and weather issues.

Amazon has also been under scrutiny by federal antitrust regulators, with some complaints centered on whether or not it forces sellers to rely on its own logistics network. The company’s focus on its warehouse and delivery services, combined with its status as the largest online retailer in the U.S., has turned it into a major competitor against FedEx, UPS and the United States Postal Service.

A recent Morgan Stanley report estimates that Amazon is currently delivering about 46% of the items ordered through its U.S. site and predicts Amazon Logistics not only start providing shipments for non-Amazon orders, but overtake FedEx, UPS and the USPS in shipment volume by 2022.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/16/amazons-third-party-merchants-are-now-barred-from-using-fedex-ground-for-prime-shipments/

Amazon acquires Health Navigator for Amazon Care, its pilot employee healthcare program

Amazon has acquired Health Navigator, a startup that develops APIs for online health services. According to CNBC, which first reported the deal, Health Navigator will become part of Amazon Care, its pilot healthcare service program for employees.

This is the second health startup acquired by Amazon. The first was online pharmacy PillPack, purchased by the company in 2018 for slightly less than $1 billion. PillPack’s services have also been integrated into Amazon Care, which offers deliveries of prescriptions with remotely communicated treatment plans.

Health Navigator’s platform was created to be integrated into online health services, including telemedicine and medical call centers, to standardize the process of working with patients. Its platform includes natural language processing-based tools for documenting health complaints and care recommendations, and is integrated into apps with APIs.

The startup, founded in 2014 by physician David Thompson, has not made a public statement about the acquisition yet, but CNBC reports that the company telling customers that their contracts will not be renewed.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/amazon-acquires-health-navigator-for-amazon-care-its-pilot-employee-healthcare-program/

Amazon adds Hindi to the Alexa Skills Kit

Users of Amazon’s voice assistant will soon be able to talk to Alexa in Hindi. Amazon announced today that it has added a Hindi voice model to its Alexa Skills Kit for developers. Alexa developers can also update their existing published skills in India for Hindi.

Amazon first revealed that it would add fluent Hindi to Alexa last month during its re: MARS machine learning and artificial intelligence conference. Before, Alexa was only able to understand a few Hinglish (a portmanteau of Hindi and English) commands. Rohit Prasad, vice president and head scientist for Alexa, told Indian news agency IANS that adding Hindi to Alexa posed a “contextual, cultural as well as content-related challenge” because of the wide variety of dialects, accents and slang used in India.

Along with English, Hindi is one of India’s official languages (Google Voice Assistant also offers Hindi support). According to Citi Research, Amazon holds about a 30 percent market share, about the same as its main competitor, Walmart-backed Flipkart.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/16/amazon-adds-hindi-to-the-alexa-skills-kit/

Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota plan to strike on Prime Day over labor practices

Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota are planning to strike during Prime Day on July 15, one of the company’s biggest sales events. Bloomberg reports that about 100 employees are expected to walk out for a total of six hours to demand changes in labor practices, including converting more temporary workers to employees and relaxing productivity quotas that they say create unsafe working conditions.

Striking workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota will be joined by several engineers in a show of solidarity. The activism is being led by the Awood Center, a workers’ rights advocacy group, and backed by the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Amazon claimed that it “offers already what this outside organization is asking for,” including hourly rates from $16.25 to $20.80 with benefits. It also said that “on average” 90 percent of workers at the Shakopee warehouse are full-time Amazon employees and it provides coaching for people who are not reaching their productivity quotas.

Amazon announced last October that it was raising minimum wage for all workers to $15 an hour, but many workers said that increase was not enough, especially since it was also getting rid of incentive pay and restricted stock unit grants (the company claimed that its new wage hike compensated for the new wage structure).

There are more than 100 Amazon warehouses in the United States and the walkout will probably not affect logistics on Prime Day, but it is notable as the latest example of activism against the company’s labor practices, which are also under scrutiny from lawmakers. Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have made Amazon’s practices a key part of their platforms. For example, Sanders introduced legislation aimed at forcing Amazon, Walmart and other large companies to pay higher wages, while Amazon is one of the tech companies Warren wants to break up.

According to the Bloomberg report, stronger unions in Europe mean Amazon employees there often stage walkouts on important sales days like Prime Day and Black Friday, but this is the first time American employees have walked out during a major sales events. The Minnesota strike follows other activism by Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota, including a three-hour strike in March for better working conditions and calls last year for more prayer time and reduced workloads during fasting for Ramadan led by East African Muslim immigrants.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/08/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-minnesota-plan-to-strike-on-prime-day-over-labor-practices/

AWS is now making Amazon Personalize available to all customers

Amazon Personalize, first announced during AWS re:Invent last November, is now available to all Amazon Web Services customers. The API enables developers to add custom machine learning models to their apps, including ones for personalized product recommendations, search results and direct marketing, even if they don’t have machine learning experience.

The API processes data using algorithms originally created for Amazon’s own retail business,  but the company says all data will be “kept completely private, owned entirely by the customer.” The service is now available to AWS users in three U.S. regions, East (Ohio), East (North Virginia) and West (Oregon), two Asia Pacific regions (Tokyo and Singapore) and Ireland in the European Union, with more regions to launch soon.

AWS customers who have already added Amazon Personalize to their apps include Yamaha Corporation of America, Subway, Zola and Segment. In Amazon’s press release, Yamaha Corporation of America Director of Information Technology Ishwar Bharbhari said Amazon Personalize “saves us up to 60% of the time needed to set up and tune the infrastructure and algorithms for our machine learning models when compared to building and configuring the environment on our own.”

Amazon Personalize’s pricing model charges five cents per GB of data uploaded to Amazon Personalize and 24 cents per training hour used to train a custom model with their data. Real-time recommendation requests are priced based on how many are uploaded, with discounts for larger orders.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/10/aws-is-now-making-amazon-personalize-available-to-all-customers/

Having trouble with Amazon Alexa? You’re not the only one.

If your requests to Alexa are being met with answers like “I’m having some trouble, please try again later,” you are not alone. Multiple users are reporting connection issues with Amazon’s voice assistant. According to Down Detector’s outage tracker and live outage map, issues are currently being detected around the world, with user reports starting around 7PM EST.

@amazon Hey, alexa is down. what’s going on?

— Jordan McCrea (@ShiningArmoire) May 15, 2019

@amazon Hey, alexa is down. what’s going on?

— Jordan McCrea (@ShiningArmoire) May 15, 2019

Also down over here she says “I’m having some trouble, please try again later” multiple devices in my house doing the same thing

— Jefferson James (@Jeffjames696969) May 16, 2019

We’ve reached out to Amazon and will update this post when more information is available.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/15/having-trouble-with-amazon-alexa-youre-not-the-only-one/

Amazon reportedly removes the most obvious promotions for its private brands from search results

If it feels like your Amazon search results have been overwhelmed with promotions for their private-label brands, like Amazon Basics, Mama Bear or Daily Ritual, that may be changing. As lawmakers pay more attention to the most powerful tech companies, Amazon has begun quietly removing some of the more obvious promotions, including banner ads, for its private-label products, reports CNBC, which spoke to Amazon sellers and consultants.

Amazon’s aggressive marketing of its own private brands, with ads that often appear in search results above listings for competing items from third-party sellers, have raised antitrust concerns. The company’s increasingly strong gripe on the U.S. retail market has been under scrutiny for years, but pressure intensified last month when Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential primary candidate Elizabeth Warren announced that breaking up tech giants Amazon, Google and Facebook (and other companies with an annual global revenue above $25 billion that provide marketplace, exchange or third-party connectivity as “platform utilitilies”) in order to reduce their economic dominance will be a major part of her platform. This means that Amazon Marketplace and Basics would be split apart, and acquisitions including Whole Foods and Zappos would be spun out.

While there isn’t a banner ad, products from an Amazon private label brand, Daily Ritual, still dominate results for “black jersey tunic”

Amazon’s private brands quickly became a major threat to third-party sellers on its platform, increasing from about a dozen brands in 2016, when some of its products began taking the lead in key categories like batteries, speakers and baby wipes, to a current roster of more than 135 private label brands and 330 brands exclusive to Amazon, according to TJI Research.

While Amazon benefits from higher margins, cost-savings from a more efficient supply chain and new data, third-party sellers often suffer. For example, they may have to cut prices to stay competitive, and even lower prices may not be enough attract customers away from Amazon’s promotions for its own items, which show up in many search results.

Other recent measures Amazon has taken to ward off antitrust scrutiny include reportedly getting rid of its price parity requirement for third-party sellers, which meant they were not allowed to sell the same products on other sites for lower prices.

TechCrunch has contacted Amazon for comment.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/03/amazon-reportedly-removes-the-most-obvious-promotions-for-its-private-brands-from-search-results/

Amazon reportedly nixes its price parity requirement for third-party sellers in the U.S.

Amazon will stop forbidding third-party merchants who list on its e-commerce platform in the United States from selling the same products on other sites for lower prices, reports Axios.

The company’s decision to end its price parity provision comes three months after Sen. Richard Blumenthal urged the Department of Justice to open an antitrust investigation into Amazon’s policies and a few days after Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced she would make breaking up Amazon, Google and Facebook a big part of her campaign platform.

Also called “most favored nation” (MFN) requirements, Amazon’s price parity provisions gave it a competitive edge, but because of its size, also led to concerns about its impact on competition and fair pricing for consumers. Amazon stopped requiring price parity of its European Union sellers in 2013 after it was the subject of investigations by the United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading and Germany’s Federal Cartel Office.

In a statement, Blumenthal said Amazon’s “wise and welcome decision comes only after aggressive advocacy and attention that compelled Amazon to abandon its abusive contract clause.” He added that “I remain deeply troubled that federal regulators responsible for cracking down on anti-competitive practices seem asleep at the wheel, at great cost to American innovation and consumers.”

TechCrunch has contacted Amazon for comment.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/amazon-reportedly-nixes-its-price-parity-requirement-for-third-party-sellers-in-the-u-s/

FTC brings its first case against fake paid reviews on Amazon

The Federal Trade Commission announced on Tuesday evening that it has brought its first case against using fake reviews to sell products online. The Commission said it will settle with defendant Cure Encapsulations Inc., a New York City-based company, and owner Naftula Jacobwitz, who it accused of making false claims about a weight loss supplement and paying a third-party website to post fake reviews on Amazon.

Fake reviews are a constant nuisance for Amazon shoppers, despite algorithms designed to safeguard its review system, and the company has hit back with a series of lawsuits against websites that offer to post fake verified reviews.

According to the FTC’s complaint, Cure Encapsulations sold pills with garcinia cambogia, a tropical fruit also called brindleberry that is sometimes used as a “natural” weight loss aid. Called Quality Encapsulations Garcinia Cambogia, the pills were sold only on Amazon. Jacobwitz paid a website called www.amazonverifiedreviews.com to post favorable reviews in order to boost its rating.

An exhibit from the FTC’s complaint against Cure Encapsulations Inc.

On October 8, 2014, Jacobowitz sent an email to the site’s operator saying he’d pay a total of $1,000 for 30 reviews, three per day, with the goal of increasing its 4.2 rating to 4.3, which he claimed was necessary in order to have sales. He also wrote that he wanted the product to “stay a five star.” Www.amazonverifiedreviews.com then posted a series of fake five-star reviews praising the pills. The FTC said the reviews made false claims, including that the pills were a powerful appetite suppressant, caused weight loss of up to 20 pounds, and blocked the formation of new fat cells.

The proposed settlement includes a judgement of $12.8 million, to be suspended upon payment of $50,000 to the FTC and certain unpaid income tax obligations. The settlement also bans Cure Encapsulations and Jacobwitz from making weight-loss, fat-blocking, or disease-treatment claims for dietary supplements, food, or drugs, unless they have reliable scientific evidence from clinical trials in humans. They are also prohibited from making misrepresentations about endorsements, including fake reviews, and must tell Amazon which reviews were faked and email customers who have bought the pills to give them information about FTC’s allegations.

In press release, Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “When a company buys fake reviews to inflate its Amazon ratings, it hurts both shoppers and companies that play by the rules.”

In a statement to The Verge, an Amazon spokesperson said “We welcome the FTC’s work in this area. Amazon invests significant resources to protect the integrity of reviews in our store because we know customers value the insights and experiences shared by fellow shoppers. Even one inauthentic review is one too many. We have clear participation guidelines for both reviewers and selling partners and we suspend, ban, and take legal action on those who violate our policies.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/26/ftc-brings-its-first-case-against-fake-paid-reviews-on-amazon/

Cedars-Sinai puts Amazon Alexa in patient rooms as part of a pilot program

Los Angeles medical center Cedars-Sinai is currently piloting a program that places Amazon Echos in more than 100 patient rooms. The smart speakers use Aiva, a voice assistant platform for healthcare, and is intended to help patients communicate with their caregivers. Letting patients use Alexa to perform basic tasks like changing TV channels also frees up nurses to perform medical care.

Backed by Amazon’s Alexa Fund and the Google Assistant Investment Program, Aiva also participated in the Cedars-Sina accelerator program for healthcare startups. The platform also works with Google Home.

After a patient tells Alexa what they need, Aiva routes it to the right person’s mobile phone. For example, if someone needs medicine, their request goes to a registered nurse. If a response takes too long, Aiva reroutes the request “up the chain of command.”

Voice assistants are currently being tested in several capacities in healthcare. For example, voice assistants in Boston Children’s intensive care unit let nurses ask for administrative information, like who is the charge nurse on duty or how many beds are available in a ward. Boston Children’s also piloted voice-enabled versions of the checklist used to validate organs before transplant, with prompts to help reduce error. KidsMD, a program powered by Alexa, is meant to be used by parents at home to help them decide if their kids need to see a doctor.

Amazon still holds the top position in the smart speaker market, and likewise Alexa is currently the voice assistant most often used by hospitals, according to Healthcare IT News. So far, its devices have been used in Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Commonwealth Care Alliance, Northwell Health in New York, and Libertana Home Health in Los Angeles, in addition to Cedars-Sinai.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/25/cedars-sinai-puts-amazon-alexa-in-patient-rooms-as-part-of-a-pilot-program/

Mayor Bill de Blasio says bringing Amazon HQ2 to New York City is “mission critical”

During a state legislature hearing today, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said it is “mission critical” that Amazon build HQ2 in Long Island City. De Blasio’s remarks come a few days after a report that widespread outcry from residents and local politicians alike have prompted Amazon to reconsider the move, which the company says would create at least 25,000 jobs.

According to NY1, De Blasio told the state legislature that New York City needs the jobs and revenue that would be created by Amazon. Other Democrats in city council and state senate, however, have been very outspoken against the deal. Amazon was offered incentives including grants, tax credits and breaks worth up to $2.8 billion.

The Washington Post (owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) reported last Friday that Amazon is reassessing its plans for the New York City branch of HQ2. It has not leased or bought office space for HQ2 in Long Island City and final approval is not expected from New York state until 2020, so it would relatively easy to pull out of the deal. In contrast, a bill to authorize up to $750 million in state subsidies to Amazon was signed into law last week in Virginia, where the other branch of HQ2 will be located.

While Amazon has yet to make an official statement about the fate of New York City plans, reports that it is reconsidering was welcomed by residents worried about the campus’ impact on housing plans and infrastructure.

One major complexifier to Amazon’s New York City plans is the nomination of state senator Michael Gianaris, whose Queens district includes Long Island City, to the Public Authorities Control Board, which needs to approve the deal. Gianaris has been very critical of it, saying that city and state incentives would be better spent on local programs like transportation, schools and affordable housing instead.

De Blasio defended the offer to the state legislature, saying that “the vast majority of the subsidy that Amazon got was standing incentive programs.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/mayor-bill-de-blasio-says-bringing-amazon-hq2-to-new-york-city-is-mission-critical/

Saudi Arabia denies involvement in leak of Jeff Bezos’ private messages

In his extraordinary Medium post last week accusing American Media Inc of “extortion and blackmail,” Bezos hinted (but did not explicitly state) that there may be a connection between Saudi Arabia and the publication of his personal messages with Lauren Sanchez. Now Saudi Arabia’s minister of foreign affairs has denied it was involved, stating during an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the Saudi government had “nothing to do with it.”

Last month, the National Enquirer published a series of texts between Bezos, who is separated from wife MacKenzie Bezos, and Sanchez. In his post last Thursday, Bezos claimed AMI, the owner of the National Enquirer, threatened to release messages that included intimate photos unless he cancelled an investigation into the source of the leaks and stopped claiming AMI was “politically motivated or influenced by political forces.” Bezos wrote that “the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve with” AMI CEO David Pecker, a close associate of President Donald Trump.

(The Daily Beast reported earlier today that Lauren Sanchez’s brother Michael Sanchez was the original source of the messages. Michael Sanchez is a close friend of Trump adviser Roger Stone.)

During his interview with “Face the Nation,” al-Jubeir said “This sounds to me like a soap opera. I’ve been watching it on television and reading about it in the paper. This is something between the two parties. We have nothing to do with it.”

Bezos did not directly accuse Saudi Arabia of being involved in the leaks, but he did note the web of connections between AMI, Pecker, Trump and Saudi Arabia. Bezos owns the Washington Post, which has reported extensively on the connection between crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian dissident who wrote opinion pieces critical of bin Salman for the Post before he was killed in October. Though the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that bin Salman ordered the killing, Trump has repeatedly downplayed or disputed the crown prince’s involvement.

“Here’s a piece of context: My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy,” Bezos wrote. “President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.”

He added “Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is ‘apoplectic’ about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.”

AMI reached an immunity deal with the Department of Justice in December over a hush money payment to Karen McDougal, who claimed she had an affair with Trump. If Bezos’ accusations of blackmail and extortion are true, its deal could be jeopardized.

Pecker’s lawyer Elkan Abramowitz told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, before the Daily Beast named Michael Sanchez as the National Enquirer’s source, that “it is absolutely not extortion and blackmail. The story was given to the National Enquirer by a reliable source that had been giving information to the National Enquirer for seven years prior to this story. It was a source that was well-known to both Mr. Bezos and Miss Sanchez.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/10/saudi-arabia-denies-involvement-in-leak-of-jeff-bezos-private-messages/

Amazon’s newest service uses machine learning to extract medical data from patient records

Amazon has launched a new service that uses machine learning to extract key data from patient records and can potentially help healthcare providers and researchers save money, make treatment decisions, and manage clinical trials. The company announced the service, called Amazon Comprehend Medical, on Tuesday, shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported on it.

The cloud software combines text analysis and machine learning to read patient records that often consist of prescriptions, notes, audio interviews, and test reports. Once those records are digitized and uploaded to Comprehend Medical, it picks out and organizes information about diagnoses, treatments, medication dosage, and symptoms.

Amazon’s other recent forays into healthcare include paying almost $1 billion to acquire online prescription service PillPack and new joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase to improve employee healthcare. It joins other large tech companies that are increasingly focused on healthcare. For example, earlier this year Apple launched a feature that lets customers view their hospital medical records on their iPhones, while Google recently hired former Geisinger CEO David Feinberg to unify and lead the healthcare initiatives across its businesses, including search, Google Brain, Google Fit, and Nest.

In its announcement, Amazon said “identifying this information today is a manual and time-consuming process, which either requires data entry by high skilled medical experts, or teams of developers writing custom code and rules to try and extract the information automatically.” The company claimed that Comprehend Medical can accurately identify “medical conditions, anatomic terms, details of medical tests, treatments, and procedures.” In turn, patients can use the service to help manage different aspects of their treatment, including scheduling healthcare visits and prescription medicines or determining insurance eligibility.

Of course, the uploading of medical records to the cloud for machine-learning analysis might questions from patients about how Comprehend Medical will ensure their privacy. Amazon says patient data is encrypted and can only be unlocked by customers who have a key, and that no data processed will be stored or used for training its algorithms. Comprehend Medical complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Comprehend Medical is already being previewed by Roche Diagnostics, the Switzerland-headquartered pharmaceutical and diagnostics equipment company, and Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which is using it to identify patients for clinical trials. By using the software to analyze “millions of clinical notes,” Amazon says the center was able to reduce the time it needed to process each document “from hours, to seconds.”

In a statement, Matthew Trunnell, the CIO of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which studies cancer and conducts clinical trials and volunteer studies on new treatments, said “For cancer patients and the researchers dedicated to curing them, time is the limiting resource. The process of developing clinical trials and connecting them with the right patients requires research teams to sift through and label mountains of unstructured medical record data. Amazon Comprehend Medical will reduce this time burden from hours per record to seconds. This is a vital step toward getting researchers rapid access to the information they need when they need it so they can find actionable insights to advance lifesaving therapies for patients.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/27/amazons-newest-service-uses-machine-learning-to-extract-medical-data-from-patient-records/

Report: NYC and Arlington, VA win the contest for Amazon’s split East Coast headquarters

New York City and Arlington, Virginia have reportedly won Amazon’s lengthy and highly-publicized pageant for the locations of its new headquarters, beating out 238 other contestants. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, an official announcement may come as early as Tuesday.

The offices will be located in Long Island City, across the East River from Manhattan, and Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington, which is a 15-20 minute drive from Washington D.C.

Last week, more than a year after the Seattle-based company began asking cities to submit proposals for its second headquarters, nicknamed HQ2, reports emerged that Amazon planned to open two new locations, instead of just one, catching candidates off guard. WSJ reported that the Amazon decided to split a total of 50,000 employees between two new offices because the company believes it can recruit better candidates that way, while also avoiding the traffic, housing, and other potential infrastructure headaches of adding tens of thousands of new employees to one area.

Nonetheless, when it became clear that New York City and Arlington, Virginia were among the top contenders, residents of both areas began to worry about Amazon’s impact on housing costs and commutes, with New Yorkers wondering if the beleaguered New York City subway can handle 25,000 potential new riders. Long Island City community groups have also called on Amazon to pay a “gentrification tax” to help keep local residents from being priced out of their neighborhood by its employees.

TechCrunch has contacted Amazon for comment.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/12/report-nyc-and-arlington-va-win-the-contest-for-amazons-split-east-coast-headquarters/