Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Wednesday, May 27th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today Amazon joins the self-driving race and actually why haven't they done so before

Google's plans to get back to the office

HBO Max debuts but with one major handicap

Facebook faces a novel whistleblower complaint and looking back on two years of

GDPR.

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

Sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that Amazon is an advanced

talks to buy self-driving car startup Zooks, that's Z-O-O-X. The deal would

reportedly value Zooks at less than the 3.2 billion dollar valuation that the

startup achieved in 2018.

Now before you say, Amazon getting into the self-driving vehicle race, that's not so.

Think about it. It's actually kind of obvious.

If self-driving vehicles could work, then obviously there's a solution to Amazon's whole delivering packages problem.

Quoting from the journal, in agreement may be weeks away one of the people cautioned

and the discussions could still fall apart.

Zooks, founded in 2014, has been working to develop the hardware and software needed to create

electric-powered robot taxis that would be summoned by smartphone apps starting this year. A successful deal could give new life

to a once high profile startup that has seen its fortunes dim as it struggled to raise money.

Amazon a few years ago created a team devoted to driverless vehicle technology motivated

in part by a push to transport more of its goods itself.

It has made several investments in the area, including last year when it participated in autonomous technology firm

...