Primed
Summary: What happens when Amazon comes to your town? So many cities want Amazon’s second headquarters. We get it. We here in Seattle have the first one. We’re in a long-term relationship with Amazon. You just started dating. We need to talk.
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- Artist: KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio
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We recently hosted a debate to answer a simple question: Is Amazon good for Seattle? And the answer is: We don’t really know for certain. But the debate did have a clear winner.
Amazon is the place where you buy stuff and then it magically appears at your front door. Or, more recently, it's the place where you go to buy a sandwich in a store and walk out without having to interact with a cashier. There's an invisible side of all this: the cloud.
Amazon has released its list of 20 finalists for the company's next headquarters. Many of the chosen don't come as big surprises: Chicago, Boston, New York, etc. But then there were cities like Miami and Indianapolis that made us ask, what are you doing on this map?
This is a crazy time of year for online retail behemoth Amazon – especially for their robots. Robots have already taken over a lot of the work in Kent's Amazon warehouse, like finding and retrieving items. And they’re continually learning how to do things that humans do.
We know, you want the jobs. That's why you're offering billions of dollars and other sweet kickbacks to get Amazon to move to your town.
We're a conflicted bunch. On one hand, we love to hate Amazon in Seattle because the city grew too fast and it's made problems for a lot of people. But a lot of us are also huge Amazon shoppers. Think about that: Amazon is so good at what it does that even people who say they shouldn't, use it.
A couple of years ago, a semitruck carrying a load of fish overturned on the Alaskan Way Viaduct during rush hour on a Tuesday. We get it: This is possibly the most stereotypical Seattle problem ever.
So. It’s been a little tense in Seattle since Amazon started shopping around for a new city to love.
Do us a favor. Look up relentless.com. No really — try it. We’ll wait.
In September, 2017, Amazon kicked off the country’s biggest lottery — a search for a second headquarters, a.k.a. HQ2. The city that wins that contest might want some insight from the city Amazon chose first. So we're launching a new podcast.