Several seats move Amazon closer to its goal: the all-in-one company

In one sense, the history of both headquarters was too good to be true, even when Amazon proclaimed it bluntly and at length. "Amazon HQ2 will be Amazon's second largest headquarters in North America," the company said in its promotional material. "We plan to invest more than $ 5 billion in construction and ensure that this second head office includes up to 50,000 well-paying jobs. It will be the equivalent of our current campus in Seattle. "

Instead, when nothing official was announced and things could change at the last minute, it seems that HQ2 will rank at the level of the company's proclamation that drones deliver packages. When general manager Jeff Bezos unveiled the 60-minute initiative, he said the drones would arrive in "four or five years". It was almost exactly five years ago.

The drones have not taken off, but many articles about them have done. Similarly, Amazon has acquired a huge amount of raw advertising after seeking a second seat.

He won something else too.

"It's tempting to look up from this soap opera, but Amazon will move away from this stunt by caching extremely valuable data," said Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. , a diligent critic of the Amazon. "Candidate cities have learned all kinds of things – like their future infrastructure plans – that even their citizens are not aware of."

Here's what she needs to do next: "Amazon will be using this data prodigiously in the coming years, as it intends to strengthen its market power and keep the competition out."

Amazon is still expanding its market power. Consider a routine press release issued on Friday: "Amazon announces the 14th indoor footprint treatment center in Beaumont," he said. Order Processing Center is a fancy term for warehouse. The Inland Empire is a vast area east of Los Angeles. Building 14 warehouses in six years is a feat. Amazon said it was now the largest employer in the region.

Amazon likes to publish news according to its own schedule. But the story of the head office has been leaked in media outlets such as the Washington Post – owned by Mr Bezos – and the Wall Street Journal. It was a rare failure for a company that excels at controlling the story.

The real story, now and always with Amazon, is his ambition – sometimes veiled, sometimes open, but never absent. The satirical site The Onion brought the present to its logical end last month:

"After a search for a new location that lasted more than a year, a huge dome was seen descending from the sky and shut the entire nation Friday under the name of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced to a horrified American population that he was now living in the second seat of his company. "