Amazon on Wednesday unveiled its latest Prime Air drone — a hybrid model that borrows from both helicopter and airplane designs. Like a helicopter, the drone can do vertical takeoffs and landings, but it can also fly around aerodynamically like an airplane. It can easily switch between those modes too, Amazon says, and it’s fully shrouded …
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When Philadelphia City Councilman Bill Greenlee heard that a coffee shop and a salad restaurant right near City Hall didn’t accept cash, he thought it sounded unfair. “I can get my coffee and muffin, but the person behind me who has the monetary unit of the United States of America, that’s been accepted here in Philadelphia since Ben Franklin, can’t?” …
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Google is keeping a list of your online purchases, thanks to confirmation emails being sent to your Gmail account. As discovered by CNBC, Gmail users can click to see a list of their transactions, which goes back at least five years. “Only you can see your purchases,” Google says on the page. “Google protects your privacy and security.” Though Google …
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Walmart is joining the race to make one-day shipping the new e-commerce standard. Amazon last month announced plans to upgrade its Prime membership program in the US from two-day shipping to just one day. Not looking for Amazon to hog all the attention, Walmart on Monday unveiled its own plans to provide one-day shipping. Walmart had hinted that this effort …
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The hottest new thing e-retailers are now selling isn’t some foldable phone or fancy service — it’s ads. It may seem a little counterintuitive, but most retailers have largely avoided putting ads on their sites and mobile apps for fear of annoying their customers or distracting them away from actually buying stuff. That’s now starting to change thanks to — …
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Two-day unlimited shipping is likely Amazon’s most popular perk for its Prime members, and it’s about to get even better. Amazon finance chief Brian Olsavsky said on an earnings call Thursday that the company is working to change the two-day shipping program to just one-day shipping. He said Amazon is already spending heavily to update its infrastructure to make the …
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When Amazon introduced Prime in 2005, it was an innovative concept. Give the company $79 a year and in exchange, you can get unlimited two-day shipping. That idea sparked a race to drastically speed up delivery times for online purchases. Fourteen years later, two-day deliveries are now much more common. Looking to stay one step ahead of the competition, Amazon …
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Many consumers may be cheering Amazon’s plans to turn its Prime two-day shipping perk into one-day deliveries. But not everyone is thrilled by the news. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has long complained about the working conditions at Amazon warehouses, said Friday it’s worried faster shipping could be harmful to warehouse workers. “With two-day Prime shipping, Amazon …
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Amazon’s isn’t growing as fast is it used to, but it’s profiting a lot more than before. For its first quarter, Amazon reported on Thursday a fourth straight record profit, reaching $3.6 billion, or $7.09 a share, and trouncing analysts’ estimates of $4.72 a share while soaring past its year-earlier income of $1.6 billion, or $3.27 a share. Revenue rose …
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The hot new thing in payments is… plastic? Apple on Monday introduced the Apple Card, a credit card that exists as both a virtual card in Apple’s Wallet app and a physical card (to be fair, it’s titanium not plastic). Apple’s card comes out after digital money companies PayPal, Square and PayPal-owned Venmo all introduced their own physical credit, debit …
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