Inside Amazon’s Secret Project to Gather Intel on Competitors

WSJ Tech News Briefing

The Wall Street Journal

News, Tech News

4.3 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2015, Amazon launched an operation called Project Curiosity to gather information about its competitors’ operations. The company took extraordinary measures to keep it secret. WSJ reporter Dana Mattioli tells host Alex Ossola more about the project. Plus, big tech companies that spent years expanding their office space are now cutting back. WSJ reporter Konrad Putzier talks about what’s going on, and why it’s leaving property owners in the lurch. Listening on Google Podcasts? Here's our guide for switching to a different podcast player. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs.
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0:15.5	slash Wall Street.
0:17.2	Welcome to tech news briefing.
0:22.4	It's Thursday, April 18th. I'm Alex Osala for the Wall Street Journal.
0:27.0	Coming up on today's show, big tech companies are cutting back on office space in cities like San Francisco and Seattle. We'll find out why and what that means for cities from
0:36.5	W.S.J reporter Conrad Putsir. And then, for almost a decade, Amazon has run a secret program to gather intelligence on competitors' operations.
0:45.6	W.S.J. reporter Dana Matioli tells us more about the project and what the tech giant gained from it.
0:58.5	But first, big tech companies have spent years adding millions of square feet to their office footprints in cities.
1:02.1	Even during the pandemic, big tech companies
1:04.4	were leasing more space instead of cutting back.
1:07.2	Now, though, many companies are scaling back
1:09.9	and it's leaving landlords at risk.
1:12.5	W.S.J reporter Conrad Putsir joins me now with more.
1:16.3	Conrad, you write that big tech is decreasing the amount of office space it's using.
1:20.5	Just how much less are we talking? It's not that much less in the grand scheme of things.
1:24.0	Because tech companies occupy a huge amount of office space in cities like New York and San Francisco,
1:29.0	but it is a really big deal for the office market still,
1:32.0	because basically if you have these companies not leasing anymore and then adding to sub-lease availability,
1:37.8	it really has a big impact on the market.
1:40.2	What are some of the companies that are downsizing their office space?
	...

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