Amazon is shutting down dozens of its brick-and-mortar retail stores, and the e-commerce giant is shutting down all of its Amazon Books, Amazon Four-Star and Amazon Pop Up stores in the U.S. and U.K.
Amazon has been working hard to replicate its success in the e-commerce space into brick-and-mortar stores. Leaked documents show that the company has failed to meet its ambitious goals for unmanned cashier fresh stores, and the use of its smart shopping carts has been steadily declining since its debut in 2020.
The company told reporters it will continue to work in other brick-and-mortar stores, including Amazon-owned Whole Foods and Amazon Go, as well as the Amazon Style clothing store announced last month.
The company said in a statement that it would work with employees at 68 affected stores to find other positions within Amazon, including nearby Amazon stores. The company said those who were not transferred to the new position would receive severance pay.
2. Google wants employees to return to the office in April. The company told workers in the Bay Area and elsewhere in the United States that it plans to require employees to work in the office three days a week, starting April 4.
3. Instagram's "Explore" page is transforming young women into microblog influencers — not necessarily voluntary. Women told reporters that while the recommendations they received on the app's "Explore" page brought them brand deals, they also felt a lot of pressure to become influencers and post "thirst traps."
Epic Games (an American game maker) is acquiring Bandcamp, an American online music company. Epic, best known for the video game Fortnite, announced Wednesday that it would acquire the music platform.
Facebook's outgoing CTO gave up nearly $50 million in favor of a new role. Longtime executive director Mike Schroepfer will move to a part-time position as senior fellow, meaning he will "give up" more than 232,000 restricted stock units — about a third of the Facebook stock he directly holds.
6. According to reports, in order to avoid the impact of intellectual property entanglements on products, Google has acquired 4 audio hardware start-ups in the past year or so, which is reported to pave the way for the development of Google's own audio patents. It was previously reported that Google will have to remove some audio-related functions from its smart home devices after it is found to have lost the patent infringement case against the sound company Sonos. Over the past 15 months, Google has acquired four audio hardware startups, including Synaptics, Dysonics, RevX Technologies, and Tempow. These companies are engaged in audio hardware, 3D audio, noise reduction and Bluetooth technology, etc., and have related patented technologies; they also introduce their management to work at Google. According to foreign media reports, Google is expanding its audio product lineup and plans to develop its own audio patents.
7.Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced that Instagram has finally added auto-generated subtitles to the video to help users use it. Acknowledging that "it's been a long process," Adam Mosseri announced the feature via Twitter, noting that it "empowers the hearing-impaired and hearing-heavy community."
8. An interviewer asked Mark Zuckerberg to circle a traffic light on a piece of paper to prove he wasn't a robot. Zuckerberg has long been joking that he looks like a robot, so the interviewer asked him to complete a Turing test (CAPTCHA), an online test that proves that the user is human.
9. Apple will launch a new Apple product on March 8, and the company announced its next pure digital campaign, known as "Peek Performance." According to rumors, the new iPad Air and iPhone SE with 5G will make their debut there.
10. Ford prevented Elon Musk from using a specific name for Tesla's new model. Now, the auto giant is restructuring and using the name of its new division. Ford is splitting into two car businesses: one for internal combustion engine cars and one for electric vehicles. The latter will be called the Ford Model E.