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Simply put, because J.K. Rowling’s views, since first writing the series, have changed, especially after she has published the books.Likewise, her attitude as to her “ownership”, and the future direction of, Harry Potter vastly differs from the views of many Harry Potter fans, especially those fans who express their opinions online.Or, in a nutshell, I’ll title this answer “J.K. Rowling vs. the Internet”.Times have vastly changed since J.K. Rowling first outlined, planned, and began writing the Harry Potter books in the 1990’s. While most of her readership were children born, and growing up, in the 1990’s and 2000’s, and with the Internet as an increasingly important staple of the modern Western household and culture, J.K. Rowling was not.Instead, Rowling herself grew up as a member of Generation X (b. 1965), and as of the writing of this article, is 52 years old. Thus, she and her views fit more in-line with most Harry Potter fans’ parents, as opposed to the fans themselves.Due to this, there also appears to be an ever-widening generational gap between Rowling herself, and the majority of younger Harry Potter fans, the latter of whom are largely a part of the Milennial Generation. Rowling, up until recently, has proven to be more conservative than many of her fans on certain views, particularly on copyright issues, expressing her “ownership” over Harry Potter, and “fan works”.The most notable examples of this are, in chronological order:1995–1997 - The Internet begins to build global roots. The first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, is released. While J.K. Rowling was penning Harry Potter, the Internet was still in its infancy. At first, due to this, Rowling, unable to afford a computer - much less Internet - wrote and did her outlines for the books on “napkins” and pieces of printer paper at a local establishment in her area, the Elephant House.In 1995, only 0.4% of the world population, or 16 million users, had access to the the Internet; by the release of the first Harry Potter book in 1997, that number had risen to 1.7%, or 70 million users.As not many people had the Internet, Harry Potter first gained fame through “word of mouth” among reading and educational circles by publishers Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic (US), and was first promoted, and would later be come to seen for years to come, as a “children’s book”.1997 - 2004 - The Internet spreads rapidly on a global scale, ballooning from being used by 1.7% of the global population (70 million users) , to 12.7 % (~1 billion users). By 2002, the first social media website, Friendster, also appears online, garnering 3 million users by 2003.In 2003, both MySpace and LinkedIn launch online, beginning the rise of social media on the Internet. Online chat rooms are also popular.Included in the spread of “Internet culture”, and during the adolescence of social media, is the founding of several Harry Potter online communities for fans, including websites like SugarQuill, MuggleNet, the Leaky Cauldron, the Harry Potter Lexicon, Fanfiction.net, and others. There are also various fan communities founded on sites like LiveJournal.Meanwhile, Harry Potter becomes increasingly popular in mainstream culture as more books and films are released, transforming from a mere “children’s book series” into a “pop culture phenomenon”. For books, Chamber of Secrets is released in 1998; Prisoner of Azkaban, in 1999; Goblet of Fire, in 2000; and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2003.As the Internet is increasingly integrated into Western schools, and J.K. Rowling conducts online “chat room interviews” with school-children, Harry Potter fan fiction and discussion begins to appear - and spread rapidly - online, quickly dwarfing other book communities.By the present day, Harry Potter is by far the largest fandom with written and posted fanfictions on Fanfiction.net, numbering about ~787,000 works.Likewise, “BNFs”, or Big-Name Fans, begin to appear in the Harry Potter online fan community, and greatly influence many fans’ views with their postings.Some of these “BNFs”, particularly for the most popular Harry Potter fan websites, become publicly seen as the primary spokespeople for the online fan community, despite most being teenagers. They are also given opportunities to host exclusive interviews with J.K. Rowling herself, so long as they “supported Rowling’s views and vision”.The “BNFs” include names like Cassandra Claire, who posted The Draco Trilogy series of massively popular Harry Potter fanfictions, and now known today as Cassandra Clare, author of The Mortal Instruments books; Melissa Anelli, the founder of the Leaky Cauldron Harry Potter fan website; Emerson Spartz, the founder of MuggleNet; and others.However, J.K. Rowling did not seem particularly fond of the Internet herself, or online communities. In fact, the concept of the Internet itself “scared” her.From a 2003 “Behind the Scenes” interview with Steve Kloves for the Chamber of Secrets film with Rowling:“But I think I wrote that, those are the sort of details that I write because, that would scare me. I read all the time and to have to just open something and have it shriek at me. And one thing that I thought that was well done in the film, ‘Chamber of Secrets’, was the diary.Now, the diary to me is a very scary object, a really, really frightening object. This manipulative little book, the temptation particularly for a young girl to pour out her heart to a diary, which is never something I was prone to, but my sister was. The power of something that answers you back, and at the time, that I wrote that I'd never been in an Internet chat room.But I've since thought, “Well, it's very similar [to an Internet chat room].”Just typing your deepest thoughts into the ether and getting answers back, and you don't know who is answering you. And so that was always a very scary image to me, in the book, and I thought it worked very well in the film. You could understand when [Harry] started writing to see these things coming back to him, and the power of that, that secret friend in your pocket.”“My Immortal” Harry Potter fanfiction edit by DailyDot2004 - J.K. Rowling comes out publicly in support of Harry Potter fanfiction online, but only on “her terms”. As you might tell, to the then-young fan base at the time, this wouldn’t have been a problem. However, as the fan base “grew up”; more people (especially young people) came out as LGBTQA+ or different sexualities as it became more acceptable to do so publicly; and Internet use continued to spread globally, this did become an issue.To quote her agent:“J.K. Rowling's reaction is that she is very flattered by the fact there is such great interest in her Harry Potter series, and that people take the time to write their own stories. Her concern would be to make sure that it remains a non-commercial activity to ensure fans are not exploited, and it is not being published, in the strict sense of traditional print publishing.The [Harry Potter] books may be getting older, but they are still aimed at young children. If young children were to stumble on Harry Potter in a an x-rated, ‘adult content’ story, that would be a problem [for J.K. Rowling].”The rise of the Internet, especially as time went on, also continued to play an increasing role in the gap between Rowling’s views, and those of Harry Potter fans. As Internet use became more ingrained and a cornerstone in Western culture, so, too, did discussing Harry Potter by fans in online communities.According to one article:“[Fanfiction is] something that fan cultures have always been involved in. The arrival of [the Internet] means it has a greater visibility. Before the age of the Internet, it was only circulated between fans.”2005 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (book) is published. After going on a “research trip” to an orphanage prior to the book’s release, presumably to write a believable and realistic backstory for Tom Marvolo Riddle (Lord Voldemort)’s childhood spent in one, the appalling conditions of the institutions cause Rowling’s views to begin to change.Sometime between 2005 - 2007, Rowling would go on to change her previous view, and stance, of Voldemort as a “psychopath”, developing more sympathy and empathy for his character than she had previously. Furthermore, her horror at the reality of orphanages’ terrible conditions caused her to found her primary charity, LUMOS, dedicating to “abolishing” these institutions, and reuniting children with their families.This, I believe, marks the beginning of Rowling’s changing views on a story that she once promised to herself to “stick to her original outline on”. She had been writing the story for almost a decade (10 years) at this point.It would also mark when she first began to diverge from most fans’ popular views on the Harry Potter books and characters, the latter of which would, it seem, largely remain the same, even in the decade or so to come.2007 - Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the books series’ final installment. Her making public her view of Dumbledore as gay after the book’s release was also seen as contentious, especially during, and after, a period in the United States where gay marriage, and LGBTQA+ rights, were a major issue (1990’s - 2000’s). Likewise, many younger Harry Potter fans were secretly “closeted” LGBTQA+, in a period of time where it was unacceptable to be open about being “different”.A lot of fans tend to forget that Rowling’s “Dumbledore is gay” reveal was 11 years ago, when the scene for LGBTQA+ rights, and how people viewed them, was much different than it is today. Popular perception of LGBTQA+ folk from the 1990’s, when Harry Potter is set, was still changing, and would for several years to come. Only 4 years earlier, in 2004 - mid-way through the publication of the Harry Potter books - the first legal same-sex marriage in the United States had taken place in Massachusetts.Likewise, as touched upon briefly further up, there was also controversy over whether or not LGBTQA+ - or “gay” - characters, or the topic of sexuality, should be addressed in regards to Harry Potter at all. Some considered it a subject “too adult” for “a children’s series” such as Harry Potter at the time; others pressed for LGBTQA+ representation in such a popular book series.However, even in the given climate at the time, Rowling’s announcement was met with plenty of controversy - and some because gay marriage was not yet legal in most of the United States, where a large portion of the Harry Potter books’ fan base lived. Likewise, there were some rumours of Warner Brothers, the makers of the Harry Potter films, quietly “silencing” their LGBTQA+ actors from the films, for the purpose of “preserving their public image”.Only later, well after gay marriage’s legalization in the 2010’s, and after other actions of hers, would Rowling’s decision be later seen by some fans, and criticized, in an entirely different light.While Rowling’s decision was lauded by LGBTQA+ activists at the time in 2007, as of 2018, some - especially those of Generation Z, born in the mid-1990s to early-2000s - are now claiming that “Rowling did not do enough for LGBTQA+ representation” in Harry Potter.2007 - 2012 - J.K. Rowling, her legal team, and Warner Bros. file, and win, multiple lawsuits against fans trying to publish “unofficial” Harry Potter books and encyclopedias, including popular Harry Potter fan website the Harry Potter Lexicon.This was, perhaps, the first inkling of more serious and widespread Harry Potter fan discontent and disagreement with Rowling, and the first time where Rowling took major legal action against “BNFs” in the online fan community who “stepped out of line”.From a 2008 article:The librarian at the heart of the Harry Potter copyright-infringement lawsuit stood up to J. K. Rowling on Tuesday in a Manhattan courtroom, and then broke down sobbing.The librarian, Steven Jan Vander Ark, had the mild-mannered demeanor of Ron Weasley, and the intelligence, charm — and haircut — of Harry Potter…Mr. Vander Ark testified that he was a former Star Trek fan, for whom reading the first Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, in 1998 was love at first sight.On the witness stand in Federal District Court, he portrayed the famous writer as his idol, his true literary love, who had been unaccountably bewitched by the evil, money-grubbing forces of publishing, like one of Voldemort’s vassals.One day, he testified, Ms. Rowling was singling out his Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, out of “hundreds of thousands” of Potter fan sites on the Web, for praise; the next, she was accusing him of plagiarism for wanting to turn it into a book.Did he consider himself part of the “Harry Potter community?” asked David Hammer, the lawyer for RDR Books, the small Michigan publishing company that wants to publish Mr. Vander Ark’s book.“I did,” Mr. Vander Ark said, his face reddening, as he turned away from Ms. Rowling, who was sitting 10 feet away at the plaintiff’s table, listening intently.Then he burst out crying. “Sorry,” he said, regaining his composure. “It’s been difficult because there’s been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention.”It was an emotional culmination to three hours of testimony in which Mr. Vander Ark gushed over Ms. Rowling and her work like the devoted fan that he claimed to be, and disarmingly preceded almost every answer to a question with an “Um.”Ms. Rowling, who herself came close to tears on Monday while testifying about the Harry Potter books, and Warner Brothers Entertainment, the company that produces the Potter movies, have sued RDR, based in Muskegon, to stop publication of an encyclopedia of the Potter books by Mr. Vander Ark. Ms. Rowling contends in the lawsuit that his book copies material from her own books, while adding little or no new information and insight.Mr. Vander Ark said that he and his Web site staff members, including a teacher of Greek and Latin and two other librarians, had compiled the alphabetical lexicon as a “ready reference” for Potter fans, because the books had no index or glossary.Ms. Rowling reacted to Mr. Vander Ark’s testimony Tuesday through an e-mail message from a spokeswoman, saying, “A fan’s affectionate enthusiasm should not obscure acts of plagiarism.”Likewise, in 2009, J.K. Rowling did something previously thought to be “unprecedented” for her: she joined the social media site Twitter, seemingly going back on her previous, wary views of the Internet as “dangerous”.Perhaps it was due to efforts to combat online plagiarism; or, perhaps, it was done as a way to further transition, and grow, her presence and marketing as an author, and public figure, online.In either case, this would, as it turned out, further serve to prove that Rowling’s views towards the Harry Potter books and franchise as a whole were changing, as well as what she wanted for the direction of it in the future.2012 - J.K. Rowling opens Pottermore.com, presumably in lieu of publishing an “official” Harry Potter encyclopedia. The site, done with a contract between Rowling / Pottermore LTD and Sony, first opened as an online gaming site. It proves to be massively popular with the online Harry Potter fan community, rekindling widespread interest in the series and franchise.By now, the Internet has since grown to about ~2.5 billion users, or ~36% of the global population. Despite the movies and films being over (for now), with the last Harry Potter film having been released in 2011, Harry Potter is becoming bigger than ever as a franchise. It proves to be immensely popular in merchandise and toy sales, topping that of existing, popular franchises, such as Star Wars.Likewise, the first Harry Potter theme park, which opened at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando, Florida, in 2010, proves to be so massively popular and successful, that it breaks a 30-year monopoly by Disney on the Orlando industry. By 2014, the second wing of the park would open, resulting in even higher park visitation, revenue, and profits.However, the Pottermore site, while popularly received, suffered from numerous delays, bugs, and issues. This, in turn, would lead to…2014 - J.K. Rowling, interviewed by Emma Watson, announces that her view of the series has changed in the infamous “Wonderland interview”. After years of Rowling working with the most popular Harry Potter fan community websites to “promote her original views and vision” for the books, including particularly emphasizing support of the Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny romantic pairings……J.K. Rowling, in this interview, as per online fans’ views, completely backtracked on her previous actions. To many of them, she was admitting that her “views had changed” since 2006/2007, when she had originally written Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.In the interview, she stated (excerpt):“What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of [personal] wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron…I know, I’m sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.It was a young relationship. I think the attraction itself is plausible, but the combative side of it…I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility. I can’t believe we are saying all of this…this is Potter heresy!In some ways, Hermione and Harry are a better fit, and I’ll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn’t told [Steve] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point…and actually I liked that scene in the film, because it was articulating something I hadn’t said but I had felt. I really liked it and I thought that it was right. I think you do feel the ghost of what could have been in that scene.”Rowling’s own remarriage to doctor Neil Murray, whom she compared in another interview to “Harry Potter himself” (and herself, on multiple occasions, to Hermione), seemed to have changed her initial views somewhat on her decision to pair up Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny.Needless to say, for the main Harry Potter fan websites - namely, the Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet - who had worked closely with Rowling for years in promoting Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny, as well as countless fans who had supported these romantic pairs, Rowling’s admission was seen highly controversial at best, and a “betrayal” at worst.This further caused negative backlash by angry and upset fans against the author, which leads us to…2015 - J.K. Rowling, abandoning the “online gaming” Pottermore format, relaunches Pottermore as an “online encyclopedia” (of-sorts). This move causes widespread negative reactions, and uproar, from Harry Potter fans and the online community, which begins a downward spiral of fans beginning to view Rowling more negatively.Likewise, Rowling’s company, Pottermore LTD, which was a team hired to manage the website in lieu of Rowling herself, further designed “articles” based on the format of popular website Buzzfeed.This included the creation of “clickbait” titles in order to gain more traffic, which many fans greatly disliked, not just because the articles were misleading - promising new information on Harry Potter lore, when, in reality, there was none - but also due to the poorly-written aspects and bad quality of many of the “articles”.Many fans also criticized the website’s poor search function and formatting, which made it difficult to navigate the site, and to locate specific articles. The website’s branding of “the digital heart of the wizarding world” also greatly rankled fans, who expected much more than what the site actually provided.But the worst was yet to come…2016 - J.K. Rowling, largely giving artistic license to Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, publishes the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script.This one is fairly self-explanatory. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which was later revealed to be largely “ghostwritten” for Rowling on the part of Thorne and Tiffany, received an enormous amount of backlash and negative criticism from Harry Potter fans and the online community.The main reason for fan backlash? Not only was the work widely regarded as “unfaithful”, and wildly inconsistent, with how most fans popularly viewed the original Harry Potter books - and for good reason - but it was later admitted by Thorne that he had based a large part of the story “off of his own personality and experiences”, practically imposing his own life over that of Harry Potter, the main character, in the play.To many fans, because J.K. Rowling chose not to solely write the script herself, and allowed Thorne and Tiffany to have what they saw as “too much creative control”, this served to further sour the once-rosy view that many fans held of Rowling.Likewise, Rowling herself, who had previously been documented by fans as liking “black Hermione” or “race-bent Hermione” art shared from Tumblr on her official Twitter account, agreed on the casting of a black actress, Noma Dumezweni, as Hermione Granger in the on-stage production of Cursed Child.Again, this decision - and Rowling’s later defense of it - proved to be extremely controversial amongst fans, many of whom “always saw Hermione as white”.To complicate matters even further, Rowling was also heavily criticized by a sub-section of Harry Potter fans on her portrayal of Native American and African wizards and witches in her “expanded lore” essays “A History of Magic in North America”, which were posted on Pottermore as promotion for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.2018 - 20 Years Later - J.K. Rowling vs. the Fans - “Who ‘owns’ Harry Potter?”Given all of the above, it’s easy to see how, when, and why the Harry Potter fandom “began to turn” on J.K. Rowling.Based on what I’ve personally seen, in my experience with the online Harry Potter fan community, the most recent examples of Pottermore (“A History of Magic in North America”) and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child merely brought to light a dispute between Rowling and her fans that had been brewing for a long time.To quote longtime Harry Potter fan, and now author of YA works like Fangirl and Carry On!, among other books, Rainbow Rowell…“When I wrote Fangirl, I had to explain what fanfiction was to a lot of people, and I don’t have to explain that much [today]. That will continue because the Harry Potter generation is growing up. The Harry Potter generation is the generation where fanfiction really became a big deal. Even if you weren’t writing fanfiction yourself, you know it’s there, you’re just much more fluent in the internet.” (Source)Rowell herself got her start in the Harry Potter online fan community, writing non-canon fanfiction that paired Harry Potter with Draco Malfoy, one of Rowell’s preferred characters.However, J.K. Rowling has publicly written, and expressed her disapproval, of “Draco Malfoy fans” - and particularly, women who like Draco Malfoy - on Pottermore.“Draco [Malfoy] remains a person of dubious morality in the seven published [Harry Potter] books, and I have often had cause to remark on how unnerved I have been by the number of girls who fell for this particular fictional character (although I do not discount the appeal of Tom Felton, who plays Draco brilliantly in the films and, ironically, is about the nicest person you could meet). Draco has all the dark glamour of the anti-hero; girls are very apt to romanticise such people.All of this left me in the unenviable position of pouring cold, common sense on ardent readers’ daydreams, as I told them, rather severely, that Draco was not concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering and prejudice, and that no, he and Harry were not destined to end up best friends.” - J.K. Rowling (Source)Likewise, writer Victoria Lee, author of The Fever King, who also explored being LGBTQA+ and sexuality through writing “slash” (same-sex) pairings in Harry Potter fanfiction and fan roleplays, had this to say of growing up in the fandom in her 2019 article “Harry Potter and the Conspiracy of Queers: Discovering Myself in Fandom and Roleplay”.“The golden days of Harry Potter fandom is one of those phenomena you had to see to believe. Harry Potter obsession swept through the culture–everyone knew their Hogwarts House (mine is Ravenclaw, by the way). Everyone had a theory on whether Snape was good or bad. Everyone had a favorite possible ending.Harry Potter, to us, was possibility: maybe there really was magic hiding behind the mundane veneer of our real lives. Maybe one day we’d be able to leave our boring schools, turn our backs on the mean girls who bullied us, and escape into a world where we had extraordinary powers and would be taught how to use them.Perhaps Harry Potter was especially appealing to queer kids. In that world, we could imagine no one caring who you loved or what gender you were. People at Hogwarts would be way too busy drinking pumpkin juice and transforming chairs into birds to worry about being homophobic.We lived out these possible-lives online, through fandom. For me–in the roleplaying games, as well as in my fanfics–I had something like a brand. I only ever played queer people. Across the board, regardless of my characters’ genders, everyone was always very, very gay.Fandom in those days was rife with The Gay. Slash fanfiction—fic involving same-gender couples—wasn’t some niche interest, it was mainstream. And everyone that I personally knew who was writing slash at the time was queer.Slash was one of the first places I explored my fluid gender and sexual identities. I could write characters—importantly, I could write male characters—who shared my identities, who liked people of all genders, who were confident and proud in their sexualities.My mind exploded into this world and I created all these lives stitched into the fabric of Harry Potter’s setting and characters. I made Remus Lupin and Sirius Black shamelessly queer. I had Gellert Grindelwald say I prefer men in eighteen ninety-fuckin’-nine, and what of it? My characters weren’t hiding their identities.I had memorized the stretch of forty-one lines in Order of the Phoenix during which Remus Lupin’s eyes remained “fixed on Sirius”–proof positive of their love. I had underlined (twice) the part where Dumbledore told Harry, “You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me. […] Grindelwald and I, the glorious young leaders of the revolution.”As far as I and about a gazillion other people were concerned, this was Rowling whispering through the pages, it’s true, they’re in love, they were just like you.But to a certain extent, there was a separation: those characters were just that—characters. They weren’t me. And as gratifying as it was to write fanfic about queer Draco Malfoy, the truth was…it hurt, in a way, to write dramatic and passionate romances for these characters when I’d never get to have that for myself.Or, not in the same way. I still saw my future the way a fourteen-year-old Southern girl is taught to see her future: go to college, meet your husband, marry young, have a house and two kids by twenty-eight. No dramatic and passionate romances for me.[…] I’d never heard [the term ‘bigender’] before. I went back online, to my slash-loving queer Harry Potter community, and floated that word on tumblr. And it turned out I wasn’t alone. Those same friends who wrote gay fanfic, who role played queerified HP characters online, had also discovered something about themselves in the process. Ginny and Luna made me realize I’m gay, someone said in my askbox. Someone else: Harry/Draco fic was the first time I got to feel like a man. Or, I don’t know what gender I am, but I know it’s not the one I was born with.A whole new set of terms presented themselves to me, buoyed into my inbox from the mouths of these queer slash fanatics: nonbinary, genderfluid, genderqueer.Would I have figured out I was bigender without Harry Potter? Definitely. But it might have taken me that much longer—or I might have wasted even more time worrying about whether my identity was real. As the Harry Potter kids informed me, no cis person spends this much time agonizing over their gender.Back in fandom days, we didn’t need anyone to tell us if the Harry Potter characters were gay or not. They just were.They were gay because we said so, they were gay and in love and they were going to have brilliant, happy lives. Harry Potter fandom took a set of books that were almost aggressively straight and cisgender and colored them in with rainbow ink. We wrote our own stories in new iterations over and over, each RPG character or one-shot fic one step closer to embracing our own queer identities. If these characters can be happy, so can I.Recently, JK Rowling has come forward to retroactively canonize some of these relationships: Albus Dumbledore was gay, she said first, but the relationship wasn’t physical. Only then she came back years later to say actually, the relationship was physical, and passionately so. As a teen reader, this kind of confirmation of queerness in Harry Potter would have made me unspeakably happy. I’d have seen it as validation of my identity from the author of my favorite book series.But as an adult queer, I have come to expect more from the media I consume. It’s not enough to say the characters were gay—I want to see them be gay on the page. I want true representation of the entire spectrum of queerness, written in ink. That’s the kind of representation queer fanfic writers created for ourselves in the heyday of Harry Potter fandom, and it’s the representation we’ve come to demand from the original source material.Queer readers deserve to see ourselves depicted in literature. Transformative works like fanfiction will always be an important and wonderful part of exploring a fandom—but one thing that might have helped my teenage self come to terms with their gender and sexual identities earlier isn’t more fanfic…it’s more queer characters depicted in canonical media, as casually as cisgender straight characters have been since forever.If I could give my fourteen-year-old self anything, it would be this: the gift of opening a book and discovering a character who identified as both male and female, who was both bisexual and bigender—and who was, above all, proud.”This, among other disputes with Rowling, is what helped motivate fans, Rainbow Rowell and Victoria Lee included, to turn their Harry Potter fan works into original works. Ones where they, and not Rowling, can write their own narratives.Namely, the primary dispute, in regards to the Harry Potter books themselves, is thus: “Who ‘owns’ the legacy of Harry Potter, as a franchise, and its future direction? J.K. Rowling, the original author who wrote the series, and continues to write content…or the Harry Potter fans, who support the franchise with their money?”From the timeline provided above, the process of divergence has been on years in the making, taking over a decade to come to an impasse between author and fans.With the original Harry Potter fans “growing up” and maturing, so, too, have they increasingly come to view Harry Potter not as a “children’s book series”, but as an “adult one”, too. Meanwhile, Rowling still largely sees the original Harry Potter books as “for children”, seeking to write more “adult” themes into the spin-off Fantastic Beasts film franchise.To revisit the “generational gap” as well, it’s clear that J.K. Rowling, who grew up in a more “conservative” time, has vastly different views of Harry Potter than Milennial fans do.The primary reason for this? Technology. Specifically, the rise of the Internet and social media in modern society. As opposed to the time Rowling grew up in, Milennial Harry Potter fans are now much greater in number and vocal ability, thanks to growing up using (and forming communities on) the Internet.To quote a 2015 source:The Internet seems to be a good leveler of digital use, at least within the US. While fewer than 60% of senior citizens (ages >65) are conversant with and use the Internet in 2014, the percentages are comparable for all other age groups; 92% for teens, 97% for young adults (18-29 years), 94% for the mid-lifers (30-49) and 88% for older adults (50-64).How the internet is used also varies among age groups. While teenagers and young adults under age 30 use the Internet to find information, socialize, play, shop and perhaps conduct business, older users visit government websites or seek financial information online. However this gap is narrowing, according to Pew Research, and activities such as emails and search engines being increasingly used by all age groups that are online.Social media is another area where there is an age difference. While the percentage of adults who use social media (72%) is not that different from the youngsters in it (81%), there is a difference in the type of social media applications that is favored. Youngsters (teens and young adults) seem more prevalent in social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter, while adults dominate Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest.Adults are largely passive or semi-active users of social media, as seen in that adults typically add contacts only on request, while adolescents actively seek new friendships.Adolescents use the social media platform as a conversation space and an outlet for self-expression, aimed largely at building new relationships, while adults use social media to maintaining existing relationships. Adults have fewer contacts with a third of the adults in social media admitting to having family as their main contact group. Contrast this with the fact that only 10 and 15% of adolescents reported to have family in their social media contact list.The type of material people post on social media sites differs as well. A surprising observation has been that teens post fewer photos on social media sites (like Instagram, for instance) than adults. Teens also post more selfies than adults, which is directly related to the fact that they click more selfies than adults. Teens also appear to post material that depict “mood/emotion” and “follow/like” topics, which are geared towards attracting more followers. Adults however, post under topics that included “arts/photos/design,” “locations,” “nature” and “social/people.”It is generally believed that young people are risky users of social network sites, because they apparently share more information about themselves than is safe and care little about their privacy. This contention is backed by countless examples of catastrophic outcomes of such exposures. However, the media frenzy around such incidents belies the real situation.Youngsters, especially teens, have been found to make better use of the privacy settings provided by social network sites compared to adults. This is probably because they tend to separate their offline identity from their online identity in order to manage their reputation.While the relationship between age and technology use is, if not always as expected, not really shocking, there is a growing disparity in the tech industry - the generators of technology.According to a survey by PayScale, the median age of workers at many of the most successful companies in the technology industry hovers well below 35.Older companies had a higher median age, and younger companies had medium age of 30 or younger. This is despite the fact that the people who heralded the IT revolution are now in their forties (40’s) and beyond. This disparity has been attributed to the change in technology tools and platform over the years.It can be argued that the comfort level that the younger generation has with technology is manifesting itself in them helping find newer ways to improve productivity and efficiency of our lives. What this bodes for the future of human-kind can only be speculated at this point, but it certainly portends to be an unprecedented chapter in the history of civilization.

It’s difficult to recall positives and negatives of all 50*, so I will start by offering highlights of the places I’ve called home. Perhaps I will become more motivated as I write. For some places, I will intentionally omit negatives if they don’t immediately come to mind.*My irrational fear of flying has kept me from Hawaii, so let’s pretend you asked this question between January 4 and August 20 of 1959.New York - Best thing - the best bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches one can get (oftentimes from a gas station that happens to have a grille). Worst thing - the bridges in and out of the city do not flow freely like most bridges in other parts of the country. This leads to major congestion and, if you suffer from anxiety like I, high levels of stress caused by the mere thought of having to drive to Long Island.California - Best thing - Yosemite. Runner up - coastal drivingNorth Carolina - Best thing - College basketball (at least in and near the Triangle area). Worst thing - the population (in the Triangle) has far outpaced the civil engineering, leading to a major commuting nightmare.Montana - Best thing - out of all the things I immediately think of when I think of Montana, the fact that drivers wave at each other is my favorite; it adds a true sense of community to the entire state. It’s something I miss everyday of my life. Worst thing - getting stuck behind a heavy vehicle (or nervous driver) going over the pass on US-2 in the middle of tourist season.Arizona - Best thing - cheap gas. Worst thing - Road quality. I suppose the heat contributes to buckling, but we have people living in outer space. How can we not get a few scientists to study the effects of heat on different road surfaces (or more accurately - how can we get politicians in Arizona to read those studies?)The rest are just based on visiting and traveling through.New Jersey - Best thing - cheap gas that someone else actually pumps for you (major perk in the winter months). Worst thing - Chris Christie.Connecticut - Best thing - really good cheeseburgers. Worst thing - They let the Whalers leave Hartford.Pennsylvania - Best thing - amazing sports fans.Ohio - Best thing - friendly and prideful people. Worst thing - Ohio State University (not really, but Lendale White thinks so).Tennessee - Best thing - 3 amazing and distinctly different cities.Florida - Best thing - The Gulf Coast. Worst thing - the rest of it.Colorado - Best thing - lots of access to 14ers and other great hiking (if that’s your thing). Worst thing - Driving eastbound into the Eisenhower Tunnel when it is cold and rainy. The road gets a bit slick, yet no one slows down.Kansas - Best thing - You’re almost to Colorado. Kidding (I’m getting tired). Despite people calling it a flyover state, driving through the amber waves of grain is something everyone should do at least twice. After the boredom comes serenity. Worst thing - toll roads. Really, bro? Tolls?New Mexico - Best thing - Green chiles on EVERYTHING!! New Mexican food is truly amazing and hard to imitate.Utah - Best thing(s) - Outdoor activities. Zion and Moab are both in my Top 10 list of favorite places in the country. Worst thing - the bugs that stick to your windshield near Salt Lake.North Dakota - Best thing - the town of Medora. Drive there and see why. Worst thing - sleeping in the rest area just east of Medora may lead to an unfriendly and unnerving close encounter with a bison.South Dakota - Best thing - Crazy Horse and Badlands NP. I chose two best things because by now you’ve already chosen which way you will be voting on my post. Worst thing - paying for parking at Mount Rushmore. Your National Parks Pass won’t help you in this situation.Washington - Best thing - Another tie between Cascades NP and Neah Bay. Both are amazingly beautiful. For those of you searching for Sasquatch, start near Neah Bay; even as a skeptic, I couldn’t help but think “yeah, I could see that as a possibility” while I was there. Worst part - Traffic (I’m looking at you, Microsoft).Oregon - Best thing - The town of Astoria. Worst thing - The small towns along the coast don’t feel as small as they did when I first visited. It may have something to do with me telling everyone how cool it is there, but that’s my own cross to bear.Nevada - Best thing - The mountains are not as popular as mountains in other states, which makes for peaceful climbing and hiking. Worst thing - pronounce it wrong and find out.Idaho - Best thing - It’s hard not to see a bald eagle flying around in the northern part of the state during the summer months. Worst thing - There is a never-ending construction project happening on Interstate 90; this slows traffic considerably.Maine - One of the last states I visited, Maine — and more specifically, the town of Lubec — has a special place in my heart. The town is small, welcoming and friendly. I would later realize that this feeling is common throughout the parts of the state I’ve visited.Alright. I thought I’d be able to get through at least half, but I’m getting tired and need to go accomplish other things.UPDATE - PART II I’ll try to push through and finish the list now.Wyoming - Best part - The Tetons/ Jackson area. The views are amazing. The air is fresh. Just don’t try to go over Teton Pass in bad weather (or if you are a nervous driver). Worst part - The idiots in Yellowstone who get too close to extremely dangerous wildlife. These animals will kill you, and people will be videotaping your death. Don’t be that person.Massachusetts - As a native New Yorker, we are taught not to like Massachusetts (namely Boston) for silly reasons. With that said, it is difficult to narrow down my favorite part of Massachusetts, but I will go with Fenway Park. If you have never been (even if you don’t like baseball), it is a thrill. Sporting arenas with that much history are a dying breed. Worst part - Parking near Fenway. Pro tip - drive into a neighborhood that doesn’t have permit parking. Park there, and walk to the stadium. Honorable mention - taxes.Illinois - Best part - Again, NY pride shouldn’t allow me to say this, but the pizza in Chicago is amazing. Wrigley Field is amazing. The buildings in Chicago are amazing. The people are awesome. Worst part - the people in the rest of the state are forgotten about (much like NYers not living in NYC), so to them I show sympathy.Indiana - Best part - What little woodland they have is beautiful. People don’t often associate Indiana with outdoor activity, but they have it. Worst Part - Gary can be a scary place if you find yourself there without a quick way back to the Interstate.Michigan - Best part - Flint. I have a friend with whom I worked from Flint who gave me a pretty cool over-the-phone tour of the town back in the early 2000’s. If you find yourself there, appreciate what it once was, and that the people are what will make it better again. Do yourself a favor and go to Halo Burger. They seem to only hire very personable people. Worst part - extreme poverty. Be it the cereal manufacturing towns or the once-thriving auto manufacturing towns, there is a feeling of helplessness. If you don’t see it firsthand, you can never truly understand the plight of Michiganders.Vermont - Best part - As an ice cream fiend, visiting Ben & Jerry’s flavor cemetery is really cool. A close second would be the hiking in the Green Mountains.New Hampshire - Best part - the beach. Yes, New Hampshire has a beach (about 18 miles worth, if I remember correctly). This little known fact makes it a really cool place to be.Rhode Island - Disclaimer - I’ve only spent a few days out of my entire life in Rhode Island, so I can’t give a good “worst” about it, and my “best” is from a rather limited list. Best part - The police department of Providence. They had an old school vibe. They were friendly, but stern, and never gave the impression that they would abuse authority, while at the same time, never giving the impression that they were pushovers. It was a good balance of what I think police should be.West Virginia - Best part - The West Virginia State Fair. Aside from the Georgia National Fair in Perry, GA, this is probably my favorite fair. The grounds are beautifully maintained, the fair board brings in a great mix of vendors, and the people are really fun to be around. My first time working there, one of the musical acts was a young teenager by the name of Britney Spears. Her voice echoed through the fairgrounds in a way that said we were part of something big. Worst part - the smaller towns are not always friendly to outsiders. If you don’t know anyone there, I’d suggest staying on the Interstate and only visiting the larger towns.Virginia - Best part - The area that borders Tennessee and Kentucky. It is amazingly beautiful and out of the way. Skip Skyline Drive and go here instead. Worst part - if you’ve been following along closely, you know I hate traffic. Any road in Northern Virginia (especially during rush hours, and increasing exponentially with respect to proximity of I-495) can become a nightmare.Georgia - Best part - The Georgia National Fair. The grounds are beautiful, the board is amazing, and since it happens toward the end of the carnival season on the East Coast, most of the vendors and workers have a rare happiness to them (almost like high school senioritis). They also have a great lineup of free concerts. This last year I saw Boys II Men; the year before I got to see Charlie Daniels perform The Devil Went Down to Georgia in front of actual Georgians, while in Georgia. In case you are wondering, that is going to be a deathbed memory upon which I will smile widely. Worst part - not being able to buy roadside peaches at certain times of the year.Alabama - Best part - The town of Gulf Shores. Visit in the off season and enjoy some of the coolest people you’ve ever met. Worst part - Not enough Auburn fans outside of the actual town of Auburn, which in turn actually leads to my second favorite thing about the state — Hearing Bama fans reply with “Roll Tide” after I shout “War Eagle.” I really like Alabama as a place and as a culture.Louisiana - Best part - Very friendly people and good service. If you pronounce the word “boudin” incorrectly, they will happily correct you while laughing and announcing your silly pronunciation; it’s all in good fun and made me feel very welcome. Worst part - Seeing the [remnants of the] town of Slydell in December of 2005. It still breaks my heart to think about it.Mississippi - Best part - Coastal driving. I love beaches, I love driving, and the Gulf Coast is my favorite coast. Why not get all three at the same time. If you’re lucky, you can be there when they do a car cruise on US-90. Worst part - I’ve encountered people in the rural central areas of the state who hold a lot of hatred in their hearts.Arkansas - Best part - You can pay a small fee at a state park and actually dig for diamonds. This is not just some novelty; there are actual diamonds here, and you can keep what you find. Worst part - If you travel to the area where former President Bill Clinton lived, you will see examples of extreme poverty in a forgotten community.Kentucky - Best part - The never-ending country roads flanked by rolling grassy areas used for horse stables. The lawns are manicured beyond meticulous, the horses all look like they came out of a painting. Worst part - the poverty in the neighboring areas of Churchill Downs. It’s hard to justify paying to park in order to pay to get in, in order to pay money to bet on a horse worth more than entire neighborhood blocks just steps from the gate. I am not here to judge anyone for how they spend their money; I want to make that clear. Personally, as soon as I was about to hand the guy my money to park, I made the decision to turn around and buy lunch for someone instead. That scene, on opening weekend, changed my life as much as my visit to Slydell, LA in 2005.Missouri - Best part - Meats. Plain and simple. There is an abundance of fantastic meat in Missouri. A close second is the fresh-made ice cream. If you can make it out of a cow, go to Missouri to get it. Worst part - The Cardinals (I’m a Dodger fan; the Cards ruin my happiness).Oklahoma - Best part - The Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial is one of the most powerful memorials I’ve experienced. With that said, I’d rather there not be a need for the memorial in the first place.Wisconsin - Best part - Tailgating at a baseball game! The smells in the parking lot will make any carnivore salivate uncontrollably. As if that’s not enough, the people want to show off their cooking skills and often offer samples to passers-by. Wisconsin people are among the most genuine and pleasant people I’ve experienced in the United States.Minnesota - Best part - Juicy Lucy cheeseburgers. Someone in Milwaukee actually told me about them, and suggested I go to a place called The Nook to get one. I’m glad I did. There is much debate over who invented this amazing feat of mankind’s ability to satisfy hunger, and I do not wish to be part of that debate. I can recommend eating at The Nook. Eat downstairs and watch people bowl while you eat for added enjoyment. Worst part - the name of their NHL team. Moreover, the fact that the North Stars left back in the day. Similar to my feelings for the Whalers, these teams made the NHL what it was in the 80’s. It will never have that down home feeling again thanks to sports conglomerates and the modernization of things that were cooler the way they were.South Carolina - Best part - CHUCK TOWN!! To be honest, I really only like the name. The city is cool and all, but I enjoy Mt. Pleasant a bit more thanks to its even more relaxed feel. Worst part - While most of I-95 is extremely boring, the stretch through South Carolina sucks a little more for some reason. Maybe it’s the way the sun beats down on the concrete. Maybe it’s the never-ending signs for South of the Border (sorry, Pedro, you just don’t have the appeal you once did). Honorable mention for worst part - Sand fleas on Parris Island. Semper fi.Texas - Best thing - obviously difficult to come up with a favorite thing in Texas. The Marfa Prada store is pretty cool, but far from the best thing. After thinking for a minute, I’ll go ahead and say the work being done on the infrastructure of the Dallas/ Fort Worth area is the best thing. They’ve spent the time and money to figure out how to make a concrete amusement park that serves travellers in an expedient fashion. I’ve been fortunate enough to watch stages of it being built over the years, and am genuinely impressed. Worst thing - Austin. You’d be a lot cooler if everyone there didn’t think they were so cool. It’s off-putting. Step your game up.I think I’ve missed Delaware, Nebraska and Iowa. I’ll have to consult my journals to give my points about those. Aside from Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, nothing really jumps into my mind for any of those states.TL;DR: This could be true for every state in the country:Best thing - being there. Worst thing - never being there.Go travel.

Amazo Customer Care 9679824416 NNumber Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more, Inc.[8] (/ˈæməzɒn/ AM-ə-zon) is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington, which focuses on e-commerce, cloud, along with Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook.[9][10][11][12] The company has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", as well as the world's most valuable brand.[13][14]Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more, Inc.Amazon logo.svgLogo since 2000Amazon Spheres 05.jpgThe Amazon Spheres, part of the Amazon headquarters campus in SeattleTrade nameAmazonFormerlyCadabra, Inc. (1994–95)TypePublicTraded asNASDAQ: AMZNNASDAQ-100 componentS&P 100 componentS&P 500 componentISINUS0231351067IndustryCloud computinge-commerceartificial intelligenceconsumer electronicsdigital distributionself-driving carsFoundedJuly 5, 1994; 26 years agoBellevue, Washington, U.S.FounderJeff BezosHeadquartersSeattle, Washington, U.S.Area servedWorldwideKey peopleJeff Bezos (President, CEO, and Chairman)Andy Jassy (CEO-elect)Brian Olsavsky (Senior VP and CFO)ProductsEchoFire TabletFire TVFire OSKindleServicesAmazon.comAmazon AlexaAmazon AppstoreAmazon MusicAmazon PrimeAmazon Prime VideoAmazon Web ServicesRevenueIncrease US$386.064 billion (2020)Operating incomeIncrease US$22.9 billion (2020)Net incomeIncrease US$21.331 billion (2020)Total assetsIncrease US$321.2 billion (2020)Total equityIncrease US$93.404 billion (2020)Number of employeesIncrease 1,298,000 (Dec. 2020)[1]U.S.: 810,000 (Oct. 2020)[2]SubsidiariesA9.comAbeBooksAlexa http://InternetAmazon.com ServicesAmazon AirAmazon BooksAmazon FreshAmazon Game StudiosAmazon Lab126Amazon LogisticsAmazon PharmacyAmazon PublishingAmazon RoboticsAmazon StudiosAWSAudibleBody LabsBook DepositoryComiXologyDigital Photography ReviewGoodreadsGraphiqIMDbPillPackRingSouq.comTwitch InteractiveWhole Foods MarketWootZapposWebsiteOnline Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & moreFootnotes / references[1][3][4][5][6][7]Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. It started as an online marketplace for books but expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization.[15] In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for US$13.4 billion, which substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer.[16] In 2018, its two-day delivery service, Amazon Prime, surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.[17]Amazon is known for its disruption of well-established industries through technological innovation and mass scale.[18][19][20] It is the world's largest online marketplace, AI assistant provider, live-streaming platform and cloud computing platform[21] as measured by revenue and market capitalization.[22] Amazon is the largest Internet company by revenue in the world.[23] It is the second largest private employer in the United States[24] and one of the world's most valuable companies. As of 2020, Amazon has the highest global brand valuation.[25]Amazon distributes downloads and streaming of video, music, and audiobooks through its Prime Video, Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible subsidiaries. Amazon also has a publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, a film and television studio, Amazon Studios, and a cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services. It produces consumer electronics including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo devices. Its acquisitions over the years include Ring, Twitch, Whole Foods Market, and IMDb.Amazon has been criticized for practices including technological surveillance overreach,[26] a hyper-competitive and demanding work culture,[27] tax avoidance,[28] and anti-competitive behavior.[29][30]HistoryFurther information: History of AmazonThe company's largest campus outside the United States was inaugurated in Hyderabad, India in September 2019.Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in July 1994. He chose Seattle because of technical talent as Microsoft is located there.[31] In May 1997, Amazon went public. It began selling music and videos in 1998, at which time it began operations internationally by acquiring online sellers of books in United Kingdom and Germany. The following year, Amazon began selling items including video games, consumer electronics, home improvement items, software, games, and toys.In 2002, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provided data on website popularity, Internet traffic patterns and other statistics for marketers and developers. In 2006, Amazon grew its AWS portfolio when Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which rents computer processing power as well as Simple Storage Service (S3), that rents data storage via the Internet, were made available. That same year, Amazon started Fulfillment by Amazon which managed the inventory of individuals and small companies selling their belongings through the company internet site. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems to automate its inventory-management business, purchasing Whole Foods Market supermarket chain five years later in 2017.[32]In January 2021, Amazon invested with over $278 million by opening two new centers in Italy (Novara and Modena) and creating over 1100 jobs.[33]On February 2, 2021, Amazon announced that Jeff Bezos would be stepping down as CEO and transition to Executive Chair of Amazon's board in Q3 of 2021. Andy Jassy, who is currently CEO of AWS, will replace Bezos as CEO of the company.[34][35]Board of directorsAmazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2016As of September 2020, the board of directors is:[36]Jeff Bezos, President, CEO, and ChairmanKeith B. Alexander, CEO IronNet Cybersecurity, former NSA DirectorRosalind Brewer, Group President, and COO, StarbucksJamie Gorelick, partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale, and DorrDaniel P. Huttenlocher, Dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyJudy McGrath, former CEO, MTV NetworksIndra Nooyi, former CEO, PepsiCoJon Rubinstein, former Chairman, and CEO, Palm, Inc.Thomas O. Ryder, former Chairman, and CEO, Reader's Digest AssociationPatty Stonesifer, President, and CEO, Martha's TableWendell P. Weeks, Chairman, President, and CEO, Corning Inc.Merchant partnershipsIn 2000, U.S. toy retailer Toys "R" Us entered into a 10-year agreement with Amazon, valued at $50 million per year plus a cut of sales, under which Toys "R" Us would be the exclusive supplier of toys and baby products on the service, and the chain's website would redirect to Amazon's Toys & Games category. In 2004, Toys "R" Us sued Amazon, claiming that because of a perceived lack of variety in Toys "R" Us stock, Amazon had knowingly allowed third-party sellers to offer items on the service in categories that Toys "R" Us had been granted exclusivity. In 2006, a court ruled in favor of Toys "R" Us, giving it the right to unwind its agreement with Amazon and establish its own independent e-commerce website. The company was later awarded $51 million in damages.[37][38][39]In 2001, Amazon entered into a similar agreement with Borders Group, under which Amazon would comanage Barnes & Noble Welcomes Borders® Bookstore Customers as a co-branded service.[40] Borders pulled out of the arrangement in 2007, with plans to also launch its own online store.[41]On October 18, 2011, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves.[42]In November 2013, Amazon announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to begin delivering orders on Sundays. The service, included in Amazon's standard shipping rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York because of the high-volume and inability to deliver in a timely way, with plans to expand into Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix by 2014.[43]In June 2017, Nike confirmed a "pilot" partnership with Amazon to sell goods directly on the platform.[44][45][46] This pilot ended in November 2019.[47]As of October 11, 2017, AmazonFresh sold a range of Booths branded products for home delivery in selected areas.[48]In September 2017, Amazon ventured with one of its sellers JV Appario Retail owned by Patni Group which has recorded a total income of US$ 104.44 million (₹ 759 crore) in financial year 2017–18.[49]In November 2018, Amazon reached an agreement with Apple Inc. to sell selected products through the service, via the company and selected Apple Authorized Resellers. As a result of this partnership, only Apple Authorized Resellers may sell Apple products on Amazon effective January 4, 2019.[50][51]LogisticsAmazon uses many different transportation services to deliver packages. Amazon-branded services include:Amazon Air, a cargo airline for bulk transport, with last mile delivery handled either by Amazon Flex, Amazon Logistics, or the United States Postal Service.Amazon Flex, a smartphone app that enables individuals to act as independent contractors, delivering packages to customers from personal vehicles without uniforms. Deliveries include one or two hour Prime Now, same or next day Amazon Fresh groceries, and standard Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more orders, in addition to orders from local stores that contract with Amazon.[52]Amazon Logistics, in which Amazon contracts with small businesses (which it calls "Delivery Service Partners") to perform deliveries to customers. Each business has a fleet of approximately 20-40 Amazon-branded vans, and employees of the contractors wear Amazon uniforms. As of December 2020, it operates in the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.[53]Amazon Prime Air is an experimental drone delivery service.Amazon directly employs people to work at its warehouses, bulk distribution centers, staffed "Amazon Hub Locker+" locations, and delivery stations where drivers pick up packages. As of December 2020, it is not hiring delivery drivers as employees.[54]Rakuten Intelligence estimated that in 2020 in the United States, the proportion of last-mile deliveries was 56% by Amazon's directly contracted services (mostly in urban areas), 30% by the United States Postal Service (mostly in rural areas), and 14% by UPS.[55] The USPS is used to deliver packages to at least some unstaffed Amazon Lockers, according to on-site signage.Products and servicesMain article: List of Amazon products and servicesOnline Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more's product lines available at its website include several media (books, DVDs, music CDs, videotapes and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal-care items, industrial & scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items and toys & games.[citation needed] In August 2019, Amazon applied to have a liquor store in San Francisco, CA as a means to ship beer and alcohol within the city.[56] Amazon has separate retail websites for some countries and also offers international shipping of some of its products to certain other countries.[57] In November 2020, the company started an online delivery service dedicated to prescription drugs. The service provides discounts up to 80% for generic drugs and up to 40% for branded drugs for Prime subscribe users. The products can be purchased on the company's website or at over 50,000 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies in the United States.[58]Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more has a number of products and services available, including:AmazonFreshAmazon PrimeAmazon Web ServicesAlexaAppstoreAmazon DriveEchoKindleFire tabletsFire TVVideoKindle StoreMusicMusic UnlimitedAmazon Digital Game StoreAmazon StudiosAmazonWirelessSubsidiariesSee also: List of Amazon locationsAmazon owns over 40 subsidiaries, including Audible, http://Diapers.com, Goodreads, IMDb, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Shopbop, Teachstreet, Twitch and Zappos.[59]http://A9.comhttp://A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology, has been a subsidiary since 2003.[60]Amazon MaritimeAmazon Maritime, Inc. holds a Federal Maritime Commission license to operate as a non-vessel-owning common carrier (NVOCC), which enables the company to manage its own shipments from China into the United States.[61]Annapurna LabsIn January 2015, Amazon Web Services acquired Annapurna Labs, an Israel-based microelectronics company reputedly for US$350–370M.[62][63][64]Unlock a listen for every momentUnlock a listen for every moment is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information and educational programming on the Internet. Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and television programs and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its production arm, Audible Studios, Audible has also become the world's largest producer of downloadable audiobooks. On January 31, 2008, Amazon announced it would buy Audible for about $300 million. The deal closed in March 2008 and Audible became a subsidiary of Amazon.[65]Beijing Century Joyo Courier ServicesBeijing Century Joyo Courier Services is a subsidiary of Amazon and it applied for a freight forwarding license with the US Maritime Commission. Amazon is also building out its logistics in trucking and air freight to potentially compete with UPS and FedEx.[66][67]Brilliance AudioBrilliance Audio is an audiobook publisher founded in 1984 by Michael Snodgrass in Grand Haven, Michigan.[68] The company produced its first 8 audio titles in 1985.[68] The company was purchased by Amazon in 2007 for an undisclosed amount.[69][70] At the time of the acquisition, Brilliance was producing 12–15 new titles a month.[70] It operates as an independent company within Amazon.In 1984, Brilliance Audio invented a technique for recording twice as much on the same cassette.[71] The technique involved recording on each of the two channels of each stereo track.[71] It has been credited with revolutionizing the burgeoning audiobook market in the mid-1980s since it made unabridged books affordable.[71]ComiXologyComiXology is a cloud-based digital comics platform with over 200 million comic downloads as of September 2013. It offers a selection of more than 40,000 comic books and graphic novels across Android, iOS, Fire OS and Windows 8 devices and over a web browser. Amazon bought the company in April 2014.[72]CreateSpaceCreateSpace, which offers self-publishing services for independent content creators, publishers, film studios, and music labels, became a subsidiary in 2009.[73][74]EeroEero, stylized as eero, is a company that manufactures mesh-capable routers. The company was founded in 2015 and is based in San Francisco. Amazon announced it would buy Eero in 2019.GoodreadsMain article: GoodreadsGoodreads is a "social cataloging" website founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler, a software engineer, and entrepreneur, and Elizabeth Khuri. The website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads' extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions and discussions. In December 2007, the site had over 650,000 members and over 10 million books had been added. Amazon bought the company in March 2013.[75]Health NavigatorIn October 2019, Amazon finalized the acquisition of Health Navigator, a startup developing APIs for online health services. The startup will form part of Amazon Care, which is the company's employee healthcare service. This follows the 2018 purchase of PillPack for under $1 billion, which has also been included into Amazon Care.[76]JungleeJunglee is a former online shopping service provided by Amazon that enabled customers to search for products from online and offline retailers in India. Junglee started off as a virtual database that was used to extract information from the Internet and deliver it to enterprise applications. As it progressed, Junglee started to use its database technology to create a single window marketplace on the Internet by making every item from every supplier available for purchase. Web shoppers could locate, compare and transact millions of products from across the Internet shopping mall through one window.[77]Amazon acquired Junglee in 1998, and the website Junglee.com was launched in India in February 2012[78] as a comparison-shopping website. It curated and enabled searching for a diverse variety of products such as clothing, electronics, toys, jewelry and video games, among others, across thousands of online and offline sellers. Millions of products are browsable, the client selects a price, and then they are directed to a seller. In November 2017, Amazon closed down Junglee.com and the former domain currently redirects to Amazon India.[79]Kuiper SystemsMain article: Kuiper SystemsKuiper Systems LLC, is a subsidiary of Amazon, set up to deploy a broadband satellite internet constellation with an announced 3,236 Low Earth orbit satellites to provide satellite based Internet connectivity.[80][81][82]PillPackPillPack is an online pharmacy specializing in shipping pre-sorted medications in by-day packets. It was acquired by Amazon in June 2018.Lab126Main article: Amazon Lab126Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle, became a subsidiary in 2004.[83]RingMain article: Ring Inc.Ring is a home automation company founded by Jamie Siminoff in 2013. It is primarily known for its WiFi powered smart doorbells, but manufactures other devices such as security cameras. Amazon bought Ring for US$1 billion in 2018.[84]ShelfariShelfari was a social cataloging website for books. Shelfari users built virtual bookshelves of the titles which they owned or had read and they could rate, review, tag and discuss their books. Users could also create groups that other members could join, create discussions and talk about books, or other topics. Recommendations could be sent to friends on the site for what books to read. Amazon bought the company in August 2008.[75] Shelfari continued to function as an independent book social network within the Amazon until January 2016, when Amazon announced that it would be merging Shelfari with Goodreads and closing down Shelfari.[85][86]SouqMain article: تسوق اون لاين الاجهزة الالكترونية ، الملابس ، الكمبيوترات، موبايلاتتسوق اون لاين الاجهزة الالكترونية ، الملابس ، الكمبيوترات، موبايلات is the largest E-Commerce platform in the Middle East based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. On March 28, 2017, Amazon confirmed it would be acquiring تسوق اون لاين الاجهزة الالكترونية ، الملابس ، الكمبيوترات، موبايلات for $580 million.[87] تسوق اون لاين الاجهزة الالكترونية ، الملابس ، الكمبيوترات، موبايلات is now a subsidiary of Amazon, and acts as Amazon's arm into the Middle East region.TwitchMain article: Twitch (service)Twitch at the Electronic Entertainment ExpoTwitch is a live streaming platform for video, primarily oriented towards video gaming content. The service was first established as a spin-off of a general-interest streaming service known as http://Justin.tv. Its prominence was eclipsed by that of Twitch, and http://Justin.tv was eventually shut down by its parent company in August 2014 in order to focus exclusively on Twitch.[88] Later that month, Twitch was acquired by Amazon for $970 million.[89] Through Twitch, Amazon also owns Curse, Inc., an operator of video gaming communities and a provider of VoIP services for gaming.[90] Since the acquisition, Twitch began to sell games directly through the platform,[91] and began offering special features for Amazon Prime subscribers.[92]The site's rapid growth had been boosted primarily by the prominence of major esports competitions on the service, leading GameSpot senior esports editor Rod Breslau to have described the service as "the ESPN of esports".[93] As of 2015, the service had over 1.5 million broadcasters and 100 million monthly viewers.[94]On August 10, 2020, Amazon announced the rebranding of Twitch Prime, the live-streaming site, renaming it Prime Gaming [1] in another attempt to crack the video game market after failing a big-budget game effort. With Twitch Prime, users will be given a free subscription to Twitch, with free games from small studios and discounts for larger titles like Grand Theft Auto and League of Legends.[95]On November 2, 2020, Twitch announced a virtual flagship conference and named it GlitchCon instead of TwitchCon to be held on November 14. The main aim of the conference will be to bring its numerous, disparate communities of streamers and fans together where they can be real life confidants.[96]Whole Foods MarketWhole Foods Market store in Ann Arbor, MichiganWhole Foods Market is an American supermarket chain exclusively featuring foods without artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated fats.[97]On August 23, 2017, it was reported that the Federal Trade Commission approved the merger between Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more and Whole Foods Market.[98] The following day it was announced that the deal would be closed on August 28, 2017.[99]Supply chainAmazon first launched its distribution network in 1997 with two fulfillment centers in Seattle and New Castle, Delaware. Amazon has several types of distribution facilities consisting of crossdock centers, fulfillment centers, sortation centers, delivery stations, Prime now hubs, and Prime air hubs. There are 75 fulfillment centers and 25 sortation centers with over 125,000 employees.[100][101] Employees are responsible for five basic tasks: unpacking and inspecting incoming goods; placing goods in storage and recording their location; picking goods from their computer recorded locations to make up an individual shipment; sorting and packing orders; and shipping. A computer that records the location of goods and maps out routes for pickers plays a key role: employees carry hand-held computers which communicate with the central computer and monitor their rate of progress. Some warehouses are partially automated with systems built by Amazon Robotics.Amazon.fr : livres, DVD, jeux vidéo, musique, high-tech, informatique, jouets, vêtements, chaussures, sport, bricolage, maison, beauté, puériculture, épicerie et plus encore ! fulfillment center in Lauwin-Planque, Francecompra online de electrónica, libros, deporte, hogar, moda y mucho más. fulfillment center in San Fernando de Henares, SpainLow Prices in Electronics, Books, Sports Equipment & more fulfillment center in Glenrothes, Scotland, UKGünstige Preise für Elektronik & Foto, Filme, Musik, Bücher, Games, Spielzeug & mehr fulfillment center in Graben, GermanyAmazon | 本, ファッション, 家電から食品まで | アマゾン fulfillment center in Ichikawa, JapanAmazon fulfillment center in Macon, Georgia, U.S.WebsiteOnline Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & moreOnline Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more-Logo.svgLogo since 2000ScreenshotOnline Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more screenshot.jpegHomepageType of siteE-commerceAvailable inArabicEnglishFrenchGermanSpanishSwedishItalianChineseJapanesePortugueseDutchTurkishOwnerAmazonURLOnline Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more (original U.S. site)CommercialYesRegistrationOptionalLaunched1995; 26 years agoCurrent statusActiveWritten inC++ and Java[102]The domain Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by 2008;[103] by the beginning of 2016, over 130 million customers were visiting the U.S. website each month.[104] The company has invested heavily in a massive amount of server capacity for its website, especially to handle the excessive traffic during the Christmas holiday season.[105] According to Alexa Internet rankings, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more is the third most popular website in the United States and the 14th most popular website worldwide.Results generated by Amazon's search engine are partly determined by promotional fees.[106] The company's localized storefronts, which differ in selection and prices, are differentiated by top-level domain and country code:Region Country Domain name SinceAmericas Brazil Compre livros, Kindle, Echo, Fire Tv e mais. December 2012Canada Low Prices - Fast Shipping - Millions of Items June 2002Mexico Precios bajos - Envío rápido - Millones de productos August 2013United States Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more July 1995Asia China 亚马逊中国 z.cn, 一站放心购全球 September 2004India Online Shopping site in India: Shop Online for Mobiles, Books, Watches, Shoes and More June 2013Japan Amazon | 本, ファッション, 家電から食品まで | アマゾン November 2000Singapore Shop Online for Electronics, Computers, Books, Toys, DVDs, Baby, Grocery, & more July 2017Turkey Amazon.com.tr: Elektronik, bilgisayar, akıllı telefon, kitap, oyuncak, yapı market, ev, mutfak, oyun konsolları ürünleri ve daha fazlası için internet alışveriş sitesi September 2018United Arab Emirates Welcome to Amazon.ae Shop Online in UAE for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Grocery & more May 2019Saudi Arabia تسوق اون لاين الاجهزة الالكترونية ,الملابس , الكمبيوترات, البقالة و اكثر - سوق.كوم الان اصبحت أمازون June 2020Europe France Amazon.fr : livres, DVD, jeux vidéo, musique, high-tech, informatique, jouets, vêtements, chaussures, sport, bricolage, maison, beauté, puériculture, épicerie et plus encore ! August 2000Germany Günstige Preise für Elektronik & Foto, Filme, Musik, Bücher, Games, Spielzeug & mehr October 1998Italy elettronica, libri, musica, fashion, videogiochi, DVD e tanto altro November 2010Netherlands Groot aanbod, kleine prijzen in o.a. Elektronica, boeken, sport en meer November 2014Spain compra online de electrónica, libros, deporte, hogar, moda y mucho más. September 2011Sweden Låga priser på Elektronik, Böcker, Sportutrustning & mer October 2020United Kingdom Low Prices in Electronics, Books, Sports Equipment & more October 1998Oceania Australia Shop online for Electronics, Apparel, Toys, Books, DVDs & more November 2017ReviewsSee also: Criticism of Amazon § Amazon reviewsAmazon allows users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. Reviewers must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon provides a badging option for reviewers which indicate the real name of the reviewer (based on confirmation of a credit card account) or which indicate that the reviewer is one of the top reviewers by popularity. Customers may comment or vote on the reviews, indicating whether they found a review helpful to them. If a review is given enough "helpful" hits, it appears on the front page of the product. In 2010, Amazon was reported as being the largest single source of Internet consumer reviews.[107]When publishers asked Bezos why Amazon would publish negative reviews, he defended the practice by claiming that Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more was "taking a different approach ... we want to make every book available—the good, the bad and the ugly ... to let truth loose".[108]There have been cases of positive reviews being written and posted by public relations companies on behalf of their clients[109] and instances of writers using pseudonyms to leave negative reviews of their rivals' works.Content search"Search Inside the Book" is a feature which allows customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog.[110][111] The feature started with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003.[112] There are about 300,000 books in the program. Amazon has cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches.[citation needed]To avoid copyright violations, Amazon does not return the computer-readable text of the book. Instead, it returns a picture of the matching page, instructs the web browser to disable printing and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. Additionally, customers can purchase online access to some of the same books via the "Amazon Upgrade" program.[citation needed]Third-party sellersAmazon derives many of its sales (around 40% in 2008) from third-party sellers who sell products on Amazon.[113] Associates receive a commission for referring customers to Amazon by placing links to Amazon on their websites if the referral results in a sale. Worldwide, Amazon has "over 900,000 members" in its affiliate programs.[114] In the middle of 2014, the Amazon Affiliate Program is used by 1.2% of all websites and it is the second most popular advertising network after Google Ads.[115] It is frequently used by websites and non-profits to provide a way for supporters to earn them a commission.[116] Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazon's websites in 2007. Unlike eBay, Amazon sellers do not have to maintain separate payment accounts; all payments are handled by Amazon.[citation needed]Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service. A new affiliate product, aStore, allows Associates to embed a subset of Amazon products within another website, or linked to another website. In June 2010, Amazon Seller Product Suggestions was launched (rumored to be internally called "Project Genesis") to provide more transparency to sellers by recommending specific products to third-party sellers to sell on Amazon. Products suggested are based on customers' browsing history.[117] In 2019, Amazon launched a bigger local online store in Singapore to expand its product selection in the face of intensifying competition with competitors in the region.[118]In July 2019 the 3rd U.S. City Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that Amazon can be held accountable for faulty third-party sales.[119] The decision ran counter to a past lower court ruling that had favored Amazon. Heather Oberdorf had sued the company in 2016 over a dog leash that snapped, causing permanent loss of vision in one eye. If upheld, the decision would expose Amazon and similar platform businesses to strict liability lawsuits for defective products, which represents a major change in the law.[120] The panel sent the case back to the lower court, to decide whether the leash was actually defective.[121]Amazon sales rankThe Amazon sales rank (ASR) provides an indication of the popularity of a product sold on any Amazon locale. It is a relative indicator of popularity that is updated hourly. Effectively, it is a "best sellers list" for the millions of products stocked by Amazon.[122] While the ASR has no direct effect on the sales of a product, it is used by Amazon to determine which products to include in its bestsellers lists.[122] Products that appear in these lists enjoy additional exposure on the Amazon website and this may lead to an increase in sales. In particular, products that experience large jumps (up or down) in their sales ranks may be included within Amazon's lists of "movers and shakers"; such a listing provides additional exposure that might lead to an increase in sales.[123] For competitive reasons, Amazon does not release actual sales figures to the public. However, Amazon has now begun to release point of sale data via the Nielsen BookScan service to verified authors.[124] While the ASR has been the source of much speculation by publishers, manufacturers, and marketers, Amazon itself does not release the details of its sales rank calculation algorithm. Some companies have analyzed Amazon sales data to generate sales estimates based on the ASR,[125] though Amazon states:Please keep in mind that our sales rank figures are simply meant to be a guide of general interest for the customer and not definitive sales information for publishers—we assume you have this information regularly from your distribution sources— Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more Help[126]Multi-level sales strategyAmazon employs a multi-level e-commerce strategy. Amazon started by focusing on business-to-consumer relationships between itself and its customers and business-to-business relationships between itself and its suppliers and then moved to facilitate customer-to-customer with the Amazon marketplace which acts as an intermediary to facilitate transactions. The company lets anyone sell nearly anything using its platform. In addition to an affiliate program that lets anyone post Amazon links and earn a commission on click-through sales, there is now a program which lets those affiliates build entire websites based on Amazon's platform.[127]Some other large e-commerce sellers use Amazon to sell their products in addition to selling them through their own websites. The sales are processed through Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more and end up at individual sellers for processing and order fulfillment and Amazon leases space for these retailers. Small sellers of used and new goods go to Amazon Marketplace to offer goods at a fixed price.[128]In November 2015, Amazon opened a physical Amazon Books store in University Village in Seattle. The store is 5,500 square feet and prices for all products match those on its website.[129] Amazon will open its tenth physical book store in 2017;[130] media speculation suggests Amazon plans to eventually roll out 300 to 400 bookstores around the country.[129]In June 2018, it was reported that Amazon planned to open brick and mortar bookstores in Germany.[131]In September 2020, Amazon launched Luxury Stores on its mobile app, where Oscar de la Renta become the first and only label to partner with the firm.[132]FinancesOnline Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more is primarily a retail site with a sales revenue model; Amazon takes a small percentage of the sale price of each item that is sold through its website while also allowing companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured products.[133] As of 2018, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more is ranked 8th on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.[134]For the fiscal year 2018, Amazon reported earnings of US$10.07 billion, with an annual revenue of US$232.887 billion, an increase of 30.9% over the previous fiscal cycle. Since 2007 sales increased from 14.835 billion to 232.887 billion, thanks to continued business expansion.[135]Amazon's market capitalization went over US$1 trillion again in early February 2020 after the announcement of the fourth quarter 2019 results.[136] Amazon's total employees now number 798,000.[136]Year Revenuein mil. USD$ Net incomein mil. USD$ Total Assetsin mil. USD$ Employees2007[137] 14,835 476 6,485 17,0002008[138] 19,166 645 8,314 20,7002009[139] 24,509 902 13,813 24,3002010[140] 34,204 1,152 18,797 33,7002011[141] 48,077 631 25,278 56,2002012[142] 61,093 −39 32,555 88,4002013[143] 74,452 274 40,159 117,3002014[144] 88,988 −241 54,505 154,1002015[145] 107,006 596 64,747 230,8002016[146] 135,987 2,371 83,402 341,4002017[147] 177,866 3,033 131,310 566,0002018[148] 232,887 10,073 162,648 647,5002019[149] 280,522 11,588 225,248 798,0002020[150] 386,064 21,331 321,195 1,298,000ControversiesIt has been suggested that sections about criticism of Amazon be split out and merged into the article titled Criticism of Amazon, which already exists. (Discuss)Main article: Criticism of AmazonSince its founding, the company has attracted criticism and controversy for its actions, including: supplying law enforcement with facial recognition surveillance tools;[151] forming cloud computing partnerships with the CIA;[152] leading customers away from bookshops;[153] adversely impacting the environment;[154] placing a low priority on warehouse conditions for workers; actively opposing unionization efforts;[155] remotely deleting content purchased by Amazon Kindle users; taking public subsidies; seeking to patent its 1-Click technology; engaging in anti-competitive actions and price discrimination;[29][30] and reclassifying LGBT books as adult content.[156][157] Criticism has also concerned various decisions over whether to censor or publish content such as the WikiLeaks website, works containing libel and material facilitating dogfight, cockfight, or pedophile activities. In December 2011, Amazon faced a backlash from small businesses for running a one-day deal to promote its new Price Check app. Shoppers who used the app to check prices in a brick-and-mortar store were offered a 5% discount to purchase the same item from Amazon.[158] Companies like Groupon, eBay and http://Taap.it countered Amazon's promotion by offering $10 off from their products.[159][160]The company has also faced accusations of putting undue pressure on suppliers to maintain and extend its profitability. One effort to squeeze the most vulnerable book publishers was known within the company as the Gazelle Project, after Bezos suggested, according to Brad Stone, "that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle."[106] In July 2014, the Federal Trade Commission launched a lawsuit against the company alleging it was promoting in-app purchases to children, which were being transacted without parental consent.[161] In 2019, Amazon banned selling skin-lightening and racist products that might affect the consumer's health.[162]Environmental impactIn 2018, Amazon emitted 44.4 million metric tons of CO2.[163]In September 2019, Amazon workers organized a walk-out as part of the Global Climate Strike.[164][165] An internal group called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said over 1,800 employees in 25 cities and 14 countries committed to participating in the action to protest Amazon's environmental impact and inaction to climate change.[164] This group of workers petitioned Jeff Bezos and Amazon with three specific demands: to stop donating to politicians and lobbyists that deny climate change, to stop working with fossil fuel companies to accelerate oil and gas extraction, and to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2030.[166][165]Amazon has introduced the Shipment Zero program, however Shipment Zero has only committed to reducing 50% of its shipments to net zero by 2030. Also, even that 50% does not necessarily mean a decrease in emissions compared to current levels given Amazon's rate of growth in orders.[167]That said, Amazon's CEO has also signed the Climate Pledge, in which Amazon would meet the Paris climate agreement goals 10 years ahead of schedule, and would be carbon-neutral by 2040. Besides this pledge, it also ordered 100 000 electric delivery trucks from Rivian.[168]Amazon funds both climate denial groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and politicians denying climate change including Jim Inhofe.[169][170]In November 2018, a community action group opposed the construction permit delivered to Goodman Group for the construction of a 160,000 square metres (1,700,000 sq ft) logisitics platform Amazon will operate at Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport. In February 2019, Étienne Tête filed a request on behalf of a second regional community action group asking the administrative court to decide whether the platform served a sufficiently important public interest to justify its environmental impact. Construction has been suspended while these matters are decided.[154]Amazon considered making an option for Prime customers to have packages delivered at the most efficient and environmentally-friendly time (allowing the company to combine shipments with the same destination) but decided against it out of fear customers might reduce purchases.[171] Since 2019, the company has instead offered customers an "Amazon Day" option, where all orders are delivered on the same day, emphasizing customer convenience, and it occasionally offers Prime customers credits in return for selecting slower and less expensive shipping options.[171]Selling counterfeit, unsafe and discarded itemsThe selling of counterfeit products by Amazon has attracted widespread notice, with both purchases marked as being fulfilled by third parties and those shipped directly from Amazon warehouses being found to be counterfeit. This has included some products sold directly by Amazon itself and marked as "ships from and sold by Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more".[172] Counterfeit charging cables sold on Amazon as purported Apple products have been found to be a fire hazard.[173][174] Such counterfeits have included a wide array of products, from big ticket items to every day items such as tweezers, gloves,[175] and umbrellas.[176] More recently, this has spread to Amazon's newer grocery services.[177] Counterfeiting was reported to be especially a problem for artists and small businesses whose products were being rapidly copied for sale on the site.[178]One Amazon business practice that encourages counterfeiting is that, by default, seller accounts on Amazon are set to use "commingled inventory". With this practice, the goods that a seller sends to Amazon are mixed with those of the producer of the product and with those of all other sellers that supply what is supposed to be the same product.[179]In June 2019, Buzzfeed reported that some products identified on the site as "Amazon's choice" were low quality, had a history of customer complaints, and exhibited evidence of product review manipulation.[180]In August 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that they had found more than 4,000 items for sale on Amazon's site that had been declared unsafe by federal agencies, had misleading labels, or had been banned by federal regulators.[181]In the wake of the WSJ investigation, three U.S. senators – Richard Blumenthal, Ed Markey, and Bob Menendez – sent an open letter to Jeff Bezos demanding him to take action about the selling of unsafe items on the site. The letter said that "Unquestionably, Amazon is falling short of its commitment to keeping safe those consumers who use its massive platform."[182] The letter included a number of questions about the company's practices and gave Bezos a deadline to respond by September 29, 2019, saying "We call on you to immediately remove from the platform all the problematic products examined in the recent WSJ report; explain how you are going about this process; conduct a sweeping internal investigation of your enforcement and consumer safety policies; and institute changes that will continue to keep unsafe products off your platform."[182] Earlier in the same month, senators Blumenthal and Menendez had sent Bezos a letter about the Buzzfeed report.[182]In December 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that some people were literally retrieving trash out of dumpsters and selling it as new products on Amazon. The reporters ran an experiment and determined that it was easy for a seller to set up an account and sell cleaned up junk as new products. In addition to trash, sellers were obtaining inventory from clearance bins, thrift stores, and pawn shops.[183][184]In August 2020, an appeals court in California ruled that Amazon can be held liable for unsafe products sold on its website. A California woman had bought a replacement laptop battery that caught fire and caused her to receive third-degree burns.[185]Tax avoidanceMain article: Amazon taxAmazon's tax affairs were investigated in China, Germany, Poland, South Korea, France, Japan, Ireland, Singapore, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States and Portugal.[186] According to a report released by Fair Tax Mark in 2019, Amazon is the worst offender of tax avoidance, having paid an 12% effective tax rate between 2010-2018, in contrast with 35% corporate tax rate in the US during the same period. Amazon countered that it had an 24% effective tax rate during the same period.[187]Comments by Donald Trump and Bernie SandersIn early 2018, President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Amazon's use of the United States Postal Service and its prices for the delivery of packages, stating, "I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy," Trump tweeted. "Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne [sic] by the American Taxpayer."[188] Amazon's shares fell by 6 percent as a result of Trump's comments. Shepard Smith of Fox News disputed Trump's claims and pointed to evidence that the USPS was offering below-market prices to all customers with no advantage to Amazon. However, analyst Tom Forte pointed to the fact that Amazon's payments to the USPS are not made public and that their contract has a reputation for being "a sweetheart deal".[189][190]Throughout the summer of 2018, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders criticized Amazon's wages and working conditions in a series of YouTube videos and media appearances. He also pointed to the fact that Amazon had paid no federal income tax in the previous year.[191] Sanders solicited stories from Amazon warehouse workers who felt exploited by the company.[192] One such story, by James Bloodworth, described the environment as akin to "a low-security prison" and stated that the company's culture used an Orwellian newspeak.[193] These reports cited a finding by New Food Economy that one third of fulfilment center workers in Arizona were on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).[194] Responses by Amazon included incentives for employees to tweet positive stories and a statement which called the salary figures used by Sanders "inaccurate and misleading". The statement also charged that it was inappropriate for him to refer to SNAP as "food stamps".[192] On September 5, 2018, Sanders along with Ro Khanna introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act aimed at Amazon and other alleged beneficiaries of corporate welfare such as Walmart, McDonald's and Uber.[195] Among the bill's supporters were Tucker Carlson of Fox News and Matt Taibbi who criticized himself and other journalists for not covering Amazon's contribution to wealth inequality earlier.[196][197]On October 2, 2018, Amazon announced that its minimum wage for all American employees would be raised to $15 per hour. Sanders congratulated the company for making this decision.[198]Opposition to trade unionsMain article: Amazon worker organizationA sticker expressing an anti-Amazon message is pictured on the back of a street sign in Seattle.Amazon has opposed efforts by trade unions to organize in both the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2001, 850 employees in Seattle were laid off by Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more after a unionization drive. The Washington Alliance of Technological Workers (WashTech) accused the company of violating union laws, and claimed Amazon managers subjected them to intimidation and heavy propaganda. Amazon denied any link between the unionization effort and layoffs.[199] Also in 2001, Low Prices in Electronics, Books, Sports Equipment & more hired a US management consultancy organization, The Burke Group, to assist in defeating a campaign by the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU, now part of Unite the Union) to achieve recognition in the Milton Keynes distribution depot. It was alleged that the company victimized or sacked four union members during the 2001 recognition drive and held a series of captive meetings with employees.[200]An Amazon training video that was leaked in 2018 stated "We are not anti-union, but we are not neutral either. We do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers or shareholders or most importantly, our associates."[201] Two years later, it was found that Whole Foods was using a heat map to track which stores had the highest levels of pro-union sentiment. Factors including racial diversity, proximity to other unions, poverty levels in the surrounding community and calls to the National Labor Relations Board were named as contributors to "unionization risk".[202]In early 2020, an Amazon internal documents were leaked, it said that Whole Foods has been using an interactive heat map to monitor its 510 locations across the U.S. and assign each store a unionization risk score based on such criteria as employee loyalty, turnover rate and racial diversity. Data collected in the heat map suggest that stores with low racial and ethnic diversity, especially those located in poor communities, are more likely to unionize.[203][204]Working conditionsFormer employees, current employees, the media, and politicians have criticized Amazon for poor working conditions at the company.[205][206][207] In 2011, it was publicized that workers had to carry out tasks in 100 °F (38 °C) heat at the Breinigsville, Pennsylvania warehouse. As a result of these inhumane conditions, employees became extremely uncomfortable and suffered from dehydration and collapse. Loading-bay doors were not opened to allow in fresh air because of concerns over theft.[208] Amazon's initial response was to pay for an ambulance to sit outside on call to cart away overheated employees.[208] The company eventually installed air conditioning at the warehouse.[209]Some workers, "pickers", who travel the building with a trolley and a handheld scanner "picking" customer orders can walk up to 15 miles (24 kilometres) during their workday and if they fall behind on their targets, they can be reprimanded. The handheld scanners give real-time information to the employee on how quickly or slowly they are working; the scanners also serve to allow Team Leads and Area Managers to track the specific locations of employees and how much "idle time" they gain when not working.[210][211]In a German television report broadcast in February 2013, journalists Diana Löbl and Peter Onneken conducted a covert investigation at the distribution center of Amazon in the town of Bad Hersfeld in the German state of Hessen. The report highlights the behavior of some of the security guards, themselves being employed by a third party company, who apparently either had a neo-Nazi background or deliberately dressed in neo-Nazi apparel and who were intimidating foreign and temporary female workers at its distribution centers. The third party security company involved was delisted by Amazon as a business contact shortly after that report.[212][213][214][215]In March 2015, it was reported in The Verge that Amazon would be removing non-compete clauses of 18 months in length from its US employment contracts for hourly-paid workers, after criticism that it was acting unreasonably in preventing such employees from finding other work. Even short-term temporary workers have to sign contracts that prohibit them from working at any company where they would "directly or indirectly" support any good or service that competes with those they helped support at Amazon, for 18 months after leaving Amazon, even if they are fired or made redundant.[216][217]A 2015 front-page article in The New York Times profiled several former Amazon employees[218] who together described a "bruising" workplace culture in which workers with illness or other personal crises were pushed out or unfairly evaluated.[15] Bezos responded by writing a Sunday memo to employees,[219] in which he disputed the Times's account of "shockingly callous management practices" that he said would never be tolerated at the company.[15]In an effort to boost employee morale, on November 2, 2015, Amazon announced that it would be extending six weeks of paid leave for new mothers and fathers. This change includes birth parents and adoptive parents and can be applied in conjunction with existing maternity leave and medical leave for new mothers.[220]In mid-2018, investigations by journalists and media outlets such as The Guardian reported poor working conditions at Amazon's fulfillment centers.[221][222] Later in 2018, another article exposed poor working conditions for Amazon's delivery drivers.[223]In response to criticism that Amazon does not pay its workers a livable wage, Jeff Bezos announced beginning November 1, 2018, all US and UK Amazon employees will earn a $15 an hour minimum wage.[224] Amazon will also lobby to make $15 an hour the federal minimum wage.[225] At the same time, Amazon also eliminated stock awards and bonuses for hourly employees.[226]On Black Friday 2018, Amazon warehouse workers in several European countries, including Italy, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, went on strike to protest inhumane working conditions and low pay.[227]The Daily Beast reported in March 2019 that emergency services responded to 189 calls from 46 Amazon warehouses in 17 states between the years 2013 and 2018, all relating to suicidal employees. The workers attributed their mental breakdowns to employer-imposed social isolation, aggressive surveillance, and the hurried and dangerous working conditions at these fulfillment centers. One former employee told The Daily Beast "It's this isolating colony of hell where people having breakdowns is a regular occurrence."[228]On July 15, 2019, during the onset of Amazon's "Prime Day" sale event, Amazon employees working in the United States and Germany went on strike in protest of unfair wages and poor working conditions.[229][230]In March 2020, during the coronavirus outbreak when the government instructed companies to restrict social contact, Amazon's UK staff was forced to work overtime to meet the demand spiked by the disease. A GMB spokesperson said the company had put "profit before safety".[231] GMB has continued to raise concerns regarding "gruelling conditions, unrealistic productivity targets, surveillance, bogus self-employment and a refusal to recognise or engage with unions unless forced", calling for the UK government and safety regulators to take action to address these issues.[232]In August 2019, BBC reported on Amazon's Twitter ambassadors. Their constant support for and defense of Amazon and its practices have led many Twitter users to suspect that they are in fact bots, being used to dismiss the issues effecting Amazon workers.[233]In its 2020 statement to its US shareholders, Amazon stated that "we respect and support the Core Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights". Operation of these Global Human Rights Principles has been "long-held at Amazon, and codifying them demonstrates our support for fundamental human rights and the dignity of workers everywhere we operate".[234]On November 27, 2020, Amnesty International said, workers in working for Amazon have faced great health and safety risks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Black Friday, one of Amazon's busiest periods, company failed to ensure the key safety features in France, Poland, the United Kingdom and USA. Workers have been risking their health and lives to ensure essential goods are delivered to consumer doorsteps, helping Amazon achieve record profits.[235]On January 6, 2021, Amazon said that it is planning to build 20,000 affordable houses by spending $2 billion in the regions where the major employments are located.[236]On January 24, 2021, Amazon said that it was planning to open a pop-up clinic hosted in partnership with Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Seattle in order to vaccinate 2,000 persons against COVID-19 on the first day.[237]In February 2021, Amazon said that it was planning to put cameras in its delivery vehicles. Although many drivers were upset of this decision, Amazon said that the videos were only be sent in certain circumstances.[238]Conflict of interest with the CIA and DODIn 2013, Amazon secured a US$600 million contract with the CIA, which poses a potential conflict of interest involving the Bezos-owned The Washington Post and his newspaper's coverage of the CIA.[239] Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "It's a serious potential conflict of interest for a major newspaper like The Washington Post to have a contractual relationship with the government and the most secret part of the government."[240] This was later followed by a US$10 billion contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.[152]Seattle head tax and houselessness servicesIn May 2018, Amazon threatened the Seattle City Council over an employee head tax proposal that would have funded houselessness services and low-income housing. The tax would have cost Amazon about $800 per employee, or 0.7% of their average salary.[241] In retaliation, Amazon paused construction on a new building, threatened to limit further investment in the city, and funded a repeal campaign. Although originally passed, the measure was soon repealed after an expensive repeal campaign spearheaded by Amazon.[242]Nashville Operations Center of ExcellenceThe incentives given by the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County to Amazon for their new Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville Yards, a site owned by developer Southwest Value Partners, have been controversial, including the decision by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development to keep the full extent of the agreement secret.[243] The incentives include "$102 million in combined grants and tax credits for a scaled-down Amazon office building" as well as "a $65 million cash grant for capital expenditures" in exchange for the creation of 5,000 jobs over seven years.[243]The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government called for more transparency.[243] Another local organization known as the People's Alliance for Transit, Housing, and Employment (PATHE) suggested no public money should be given to Amazon; instead, it should be spent on building more public housing for the working poor and the homeless and investing in more public transportation for Nashvillians.[244] Others suggested incentives to big corporations do not improve the local economy.[245]In November 2018, the proposal to give Amazon $15 million in incentives was criticized by the Nashville Firefighters Union and the Nashville chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police,[246] who called it "corporate welfare."[247] In February 2019, another $15.2 million in infrastructure was approved by the council, although it was voted down by three council members, including Councilwoman Angie Henderson who dismissed it as "cronyism".[248]Facial recognition technology and law enforcementWhile Amazon has publicly opposed secret government surveillance, as revealed by Freedom of Information Act requests it has supplied facial recognition support to law enforcement in the form of the Rekognition technology and consulting services. Initial testing included the city of Orlando, Florida, and Washington County, Oregon. Amazon offered to connect Washington County with other Amazon government customers interested in Rekognition and a body camera manufacturer. These ventures are opposed by a coalition of civil rights groups with concern that they could lead to an expansion of surveillance and be prone to abuse. Specifically, it could automate the identification and tracking of anyone, particularly in the context of potential police body camera integration.[151][249][250] Because of the backlash, the city of Orlando publicly stated it will no longer use the technology, but may revisit this decision at a later date.[251]Access to NHS dataThe UK government awarded Amazon a contract that gives the company free access to information about healthcare published by the UK's National Health Service.[252] This will, for example, be used by Amazon's Alexa to answer medical questions, although Alexa also uses many other sources of information. The material, which excludes patient data, could also allow the company to make, advertise and sell its own products. The contract allows Amazon access to information on symptoms, causes and definitions of conditions, and "all related copyrightable content and data and other materials". Amazon can then create "new products, applications, cloud-based services and/or distributed software", which the NHS will not benefit from financially. The company can also share the information with third parties. The government said that allowing Alexa devices to offer expert health advice to users will reduce pressure on doctors and pharmacists.[253]Collection of data and surveillanceOn February 17, 2020, a Panorama documentary highlighted the amount of data collected by the company and the move into surveillance causing concerns of politicians and regulators in the US and Europe.[254][255]Antitrust complaintsOn June 11, 2020, the European Union announced that it will be pressing charges against Amazon over its treatment of third-party e-commerce sellers.[256]In July 2020, Amazon along with other tech giants Apple, Google and Facebook were accused of maintaining harmful power and anti-competitive strategies to quash potential competitors in the market.[257] The CEOs of respective firms appeared in a teleconference on July 29, 2020 before the lawmakers of the U.S. House Antitrust Subcommittee.[258] In October 2020, the antitrust subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives released a report accusing Amazon of abusing a monopoly position in ecommerce to unfairly compete with sellers on its own platform.[259]Anti-vaccination and non-scientific cancer 'cures'Anti-vaccination and non evidence-based cancer 'cures' have routinely appeared high in Amazon's books and videos. This may be due to positive reviews posted by supporters of untested methods, or gaming of the algorithms by truther communities, rather than any intent on Amazon's part.[260][261]Wired magazine found that Amazon Prime Video was full of 'pseudoscientific documentaries laden with conspiracy theories and pointing viewers towards unproven treatments'.[262]U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) expressed concern that Amazon was “surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.” Amazon subsequently removed five anti-vaccination documentaries.[263] Amazon also removed 12 books that unscientifically claimed bleach could cure conditions including malaria and childhood autism. This followed an NBC News report about parents who used it in a misguided attempt to reverse their children's autism.[264]Response to COVID-19 pandemicHazard pay and overtimeAmazon introduced new policies to reward frontline workers for continuing to come into work during the crisis. One of these policies, announced on March 16, 2020 was a temporary $2-per-hour rise in pay. This policy expired in June 2020.[265] Amazon also announced a policy of unlimited, unpaid time off that lasted until April 30, 2020.[266]Additional hiring as a result of pandemicIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon introduced temporary restrictions on the sale of non-essential goods. In March 2020, it hired some 100,000 more staff in the US to help deal with essential items such as food and medical equipment. It also reported that it was so busy that it was unable to bring on board new customers and therefore had to have a waiting list. In April, the firm announced that it was going to hire up to 75,000 workers to help deal with increased demand.[267] In September 2020, the company announced it would hire an additional 100,000 workers in the United States and Canada.[268]Employee protests during COVID-19During the pandemic there have been protests by the Amazon workers at warehouses in the US, France, and Italy. The BBC reported that there were confirmed coronavirus cases in more than 50 locations.[267] The reason for the protests is the company policy to "run normal shifts" despite many positive cases of the virus.[269] According to the UNI Global Union, "Amazon cannot act like this is business as usual. We are facing a deadly virus that has already taken the lives of thousands of people and paralyzed the world's economy. If distribution centers are not safe for workers right now, they should be closed immediately."[269] In Spain, the company has faced legal complaints over its policies.[270] Despite workers at 19 warehouses in the US having tested positive for COVID-19, Amazon did not shut down warehouses, only doing so when forced by the government or because of protests. A group of US Senators wrote an open letter to Bezos in March 2020, expressing concerns about worker safety.[271]An Amazon warehouse protest on March 30, 2020, in Staten Island led to its organizer, Christian Smalls, being fired. Amazon defended the decision by saying that Smalls was supposed to be in self-isolation at the time and leading the protest put its other workers at risk.[270] Smalls has called this response "ridiculous".[272] The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, is considering legal retaliation to the firing which she called "immoral and inhumane."[270] She also asked the National Labor Relations Board to investigate Smalls' firing. Smalls himself accuses the company of retaliating against him for organizing a protest.[272] At the Staten Island warehouse, one case of COVID-19 has been confirmed by Amazon; workers believe there are more, and say that the company has not cleaned the building, given them suitable protection, or informed them of potential cases.[271] Smalls added specifically that there are many workers there in risk categories, and the protest only demanded that the building be sanitized and the employees continue to be paid during that process.[272] Derrick Palmer, another worker at the Staten Island facility, told The Verge that Amazon quickly communicates through text and email when they need the staff to complete mandatory overtime, but have not been using this to tell people when a colleague has contracted the disease, instead waiting days and sending managers to speak to employees in person.[271] Amazon claim that the Staten Island protest only attracted 15 of the facility's 5,000 workers,[273] while other sources describe much larger crowds.[271]On April 14, 2020, two Amazon employees were fired for "repeatedly violating internal policies", after they had circulated a petition about health risks for warehouse workers internally.[274]On May 4, Amazon vice president Tim Bray resigned "in dismay" over the firing of whistle-blower employees who spoke out about the lack of COVID-19 protections, including shortages of face masks and failure to implement widespread temperature checks which were promised by the company. He said that the firings were "chickenshit" and "designed to create a climate of fear" in Amazon warehouses.[275]In a Q1 2020 financial report, Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon expects to spend $4 billion or more (predicted operating profit for Q2) on COVID-19-related issues: personal protective equipment, higher wages for hourly teams, cleaning for facilities, and expanding Amazon's COVID-19 testing capabilities. These measures intend to improve the safety and well-being of hundreds of thousands of the company's employees.[276]From the beginning of 2020 until September of the same year, the company declares that the total number of workers who have contracted the infection is 19,816.[277]Closure in FranceThe SUD (trade unions) brought a court case against Amazon for unsafe working conditions. This resulted in a French district court (Nanterre) ruling on April 15, 2020, ordering the company to limit, under threat of a €1 million per day fine, its deliveries to certain essential items, including electronics, food, medical or hygienic products, and supplies for home improvement, animals, and offices.[278] Instead, Amazon immediately shut down its six warehouses in France, continuing to pay workers but limiting deliveries to items shipped from third-party sellers and warehouses outside of France.[279] The company said the €100,000 fine for each prohibited item shipped could result in billions of dollars in fines even with a small fraction of items misclassified.[280] After losing an appeal and coming to an agreement with labor unions for more pay and staggered schedules, the company reopened its French warehouses on May 19.[279]LobbyingAmazon lobbies the United States federal government and state governments on multiple issues such as the enforcement of sales taxes on online sales, transportation safety, privacy and data protection and intellectual property. According to regulatory filings, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more focuses its lobbying on the United States Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Reserve. Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more spent roughly $3.5 million, $5 million and $9.5 million on lobbying, in 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively.[281]Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more was a corporate member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) until it dropped membership following protests at its shareholders' meeting on May 24, 2012.[282]In 2014, Amazon expanded its lobbying practices as it prepared to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration to approve its drone delivery program, hiring the Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld lobbying firm in June.[283] Amazon and its lobbyists have visited with Federal Aviation Administration officials and aviation committees in Washington, D.C. to explain its plans to deliver packages.[284] In September 2020 this moved one step closer with the granting of a critical certificate by the FAA.[285]In 2019 it spent $16.8m and had a team of 104 lobbyists, up from $14.4m and 103 lobbyists in 2018.[286]See alsoAmazon Breakthrough Novel AwardAmazon Flexible Payments ServiceAmazon MarketplaceAmazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN)Camelcamelcamel – a website that tracks the prices of products sold on Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & moreList of book distributorsInternal carbon pricingStatistically improbable phrases – Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more's phrase extraction technique for indexing booksReferencesInline XBRL Viewerhttps://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872421000004/amzn-20201231.htm#i75de98b9097f40f3b5884e541f532421_73. 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May 19, 2020.Amazon loses appeal against worker safety ruling in France that prompted it to close"Amazon's Lobbying Expenditures". http://Opensecrets.org.Parkhurst, Emily (May 24, 2012). "Amazon shareholders met by protesters, company cuts ties with ALEC". http://Bizjournals.com.Romm, Tony. "In Amazon's shopping cart: D.C. influence". http://Politico.com. Politico. Retrieved August 7, 2014.Kang, Cecilia (December 27, 2015). "F.A.A. Drone Laws Start to Clash With Stricter Local Rules". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 20, 2019.Business, Matt McFarland, CNN. "Amazon gets closer to drone delivery with FAA approval". CNN. Retrieved September 4, 2020."Client Profile: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more". Centre for Responsive Politics. Retrieved February 4, 2020.Further readingBrandt, Richard L. (2011). One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more. New York: Portfolio Penguin. ISBN 978-1-59184-375-7.Daisey, Mike (2002). 21 Dog Years. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2580-5.Friedman, Mara (2004). Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more for Dummies. Wiley Publishing. ISBN 0-7645-5840-4.Marcus, James (2004). Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the http://Dot.Com Juggernaut. W. W. Norton. ISBN 1-56584-870-5.Spector, Robert (2000). Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more – Get Big Fast: Inside the Revolutionary Business Model That Changed the World. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-662041-4.Stone, Brad (2013). The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. New York: Little Brown and Co. ISBN 978-0-316-21926-6. OCLC 856249407.External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more.Official website Edit this at WikidataAmazon (company) companies grouped at OpenCorporatesBusiness data for Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more, Inc.: