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Amazon Spent Close To $23B on R&D in 2017, Outpacing Fellow Tech Giants (geekwire.com)
Amazon powered its prolific 2017, which saw the release of a cavalcade of new products and services, with $22.6 billion in spending on research and development, tops among U.S. companies. From a report: According to data from FactSet, Google parent Alphabet came in second in R&D spending in 2017 at $16.6 billion, followed by Intel at $13.1 billion, Microsoft at $12.3 billion and Apple at $11.6 billion. Facebook jumped into the top 10, spending $7.8 billion in 2017. One of Amazon's biggest R&D efforts in recent years has been the cashier-less grocery store concept Amazon Go. The company spent 2017 getting the technology, first announced in December 2016, ready for prime time before opening the first location in January. Amazon has invested heavily in its market-leading cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services. AWS juiced Amazon.
They have some very impressive logistics and brand recognition but almost no barriers to others competing against them. AWS is amazing but there is very little that binds you to using them. aliexpress provides strong competition in their merchandise sales and shopify is changing the way online companies sell, threatening both of them. Amazon earns it sales every quarter and lots of people want those sales. I can see the justification for the high R&D budget.