5M of free gear? thats not even a decent bribe never mind an incentive to a government.
Amazon tried to entice Latin American officials with $5m in Kindles, AWS credits for .amazon
Amazon offered the governments of Brazil and Peru millions of dollars' worth of Kindles and AWS hosting if they would stop blocking its effort to get hold of the .amazon top-level domain. The governments turned the offer down. This is the latest twist in the long-running saga between one of the world's most powerful companies …
COMMENTS
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Monday 29th October 2018 06:00 GMT noodle heimer
A bunch of kindles?
unless the kindle has gotten very good at Portuguese, and unless Amazon has gotten very good at furnishing ebooks in Portuguese, that's a truly insulting offer.
The Amazon Brazil ebook toplist makes me think "insulting." ebook selection even in Spanish is weak, and that's despite the large numbers of Spanish readers in Amazon's home market.
https://www.amazon.com.br/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/5308307011?pd_rd_wg=kOSTu&pd_rd_r=3fe30bbc-5715-497c-b6d8-e39a3c5de7de&pd_rd_w=JwADG&ref_=pd_gw_ri&pf_rd_r=C2HAWEDXWC2WFWVJB4TE&pf_rd_p=83880a48-09ff-5ace-bc09-6471146ac537
If Amazon wants the domain, they needn't sweeten the pot - they need a much bigger pot.
A no-strings goodwill offer to help rebuild the museum which recently burned might be a good start.
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Wednesday 14th November 2018 06:32 GMT ryokeken
5mill in the land of lavajato
Their latest bribe scandal j is measured in several BILLIONS,presidents and countries and Amazon wants ti but the unicorn (that's what's it for them at this point) for FIVE MILLONS in shitty tablets and cloud space? who would agree with that precedent? The lavajato scandal is as relevant if not more to this article to illustrate how much more insulting the offer really is.
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Friday 26th October 2018 09:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Being even more nationalist than Trump means it's even less likely you want to be seen caving in to foreign interests. "Seen" is the key word here. If Amazon-the-corp manages to find a discrete way to pay the bribe, and direct it to a few select individuals rather than a group, it's indeed likely to work.
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Thursday 25th October 2018 21:04 GMT SVV
Top level domains should not be allowed to be owned by companies
Otherwise the name grabbing rush will just get ludicrous. Do we have to go through the whole Iceland saga again where volcanic island nations get into wrangles with discount frozen food supermarkets, but repeated for every geographic area on the planet?
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Friday 26th October 2018 04:13 GMT FuzzyWuzzys
Surely Bezos and co, when they renamed the company from whatever it was to Amazon and knew they were an online retailer would want ( .amazon ) at some point, knew the name of the company might come into conflict with that particualr geographic area, which let's face it, is rather well known after a certain Gordon Sumner highlighted it's plight to us all many years before the "online Mark's 'n' Sparks" used it.
Sadly I suspect Brazil is simply hanging on for a bloody good, long term deal that sees Amazon ( the company ) laying out cash that'll go straight in the pockets of....sorry, see cash injected into the failing infrastruture and helping the poor of Brazil.
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Friday 26th October 2018 07:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Sadly I suspect Brazil is simply hanging on for a bloody good, long term deal that sees Amazon ( the company ) laying out cash that'll go straight in the pockets of....sorry, see cash injected into the failing infrastruture and helping the poor of Brazil.
I assume they must be in need of money after switching back to Microsoft a while back, but I think that negotiation must have given them an approach on how to maximise their gain from Bezos. They know that he'll do practically anything to get his way.
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Friday 26th October 2018 11:09 GMT I ain't Spartacus
FuzzyWuzzys,
When Amazon were created there were no .word TLDs. And as far as I remember, it wasn't even an idea that ICANN (or anyone) had discussed. So Amazon were perfectly happy with amazon.com.
But having a dot.word for your company makes quite a lot of sense when you've got so many sub-domains to play with. Things like film.amazon, cloud.amazon, music.amazon etc. So I can see why they went for it. Particularly as nobody objected at first.
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Friday 26th October 2018 07:59 GMT Qarumba
It's not a country!
Has no-one registered that amazon is not a country and it's actually the name of a group of mythological female Greek warriors! So maybe the Greeks should be contesting it or maybe a bunch of feminists should get together and contest it or maybe ICANN should grow a pair and give it to Amazon.
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Friday 26th October 2018 08:50 GMT Teiwaz
Don't think Amazon.com really want it....
Set up and promote Amazonian culture and heritage to the tune of $1m over four years.
Block registration of a long list of names under the .amazon extension given to it by the Brazilian and Peruvian governments.
Offer $5m in "credits" for Amazon goods and services – basically free Kindle e-readers and free AWS hosting services
That's not an offer that's an insult.
Here, have a few pennies as $1m is nothing to the international corp after all, and spread out of four years is even more measly. Ooh, threw in a few of their cheap tat and trinkets? May as well have offered them store credit that expires within a month or two.
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Friday 26th October 2018 11:18 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Don't think Amazon.com really want it....
The domain only originally cost them $150,000-odd. So they're already offering Brazil nearly 50 times what they paid to get it - it's not an unreasonable amount. It's not like it's worth much to the company - it's not going to increase their business value by anything at all, it's just a slightly easier way of operating a large online portfolio of businesses.
Particularly as they're not going to be offering the domain to general sale - it's going to be for their corporate set-up. And they'll perma-block any subdomain that Brazil objects to.
So the question is if Brazil have got any real objection, for example any idea to use the domain for anything practical. Or if they're just blocking Amazon because they can.
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Friday 26th October 2018 11:25 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Say whut?
It is with a heavy heart that I must take serious issue with a Register writer. What kind of journalistic standards do you call this Kieren?
With ICANN's independence and credibility at stake, the time for serious negotiations has begun.
Are you seriously trying to tell us that ICANN has any credibility left to lose?
When can we expect your piece on the successes of FIFA's Ethics Committee...
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Tuesday 30th October 2018 11:19 GMT Timmy B
The 1/4 of the air is rainforests as a whole. Estimations for that are between 20 and 30%. It was hyperbole as with the tat-slinging. I don't suppose anyone actually thinks Amazon slings tat in any way. I never, at any time, made it look like my post was meant to be a serious scientific paper did I?
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Saturday 12th January 2019 18:57 GMT Nifty
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/07/haggling/
I tell them the old joke about the man who asks a girl if she will sleep with him for a million dollars. Of course, she says yes. He then offers her two dollars and she slaps his face, saying, ‘What do you think I am?’ He answers, ‘I know what you are. We are just haggling over the price.’