| Amazon Finally Makes an HQ2 Decision |
 | | Amazon chose the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens as the location for half of its second headquarters. In doing so, it will have to deal with the labor, media and electoral politics of New York. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times | |
| Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. (We will take a break next week for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.) |
| Hello from Seattle. I'm Karen Weise, the new tech correspondent here. As you might imagine, the announcement of Amazon's decision in what it had billed as a search for a second headquarters, a.k.a. HQ2, has dominated news here this week. |
| After 14 months of near silence from the company — and a week of reporting that it was closing in on a choice — Amazon finally said it would split HQ2 in two, between the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens and the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington. |
| I've found the HQ2 search and the obsession around it fascinating because of the blatant display of Amazon's power to promise jobs and lobby politicians, thanks to the company's market dominance and consumer adoration. |
| The choice to enter New York is particularly interesting because Amazon will need to deal with a local political environment that is far more complex than its hometown's. |
| Seattle has plenty of activism — from the 1999 World Trade Organization protests to becoming the first big city to pass a $15 minimum wage — and certainly there's some antagonism toward Amazon. But the labor, media and electoral politics of New York are a different breed. |
| That's been evident in the blowback to the more than $2 billion in planned tax subsidies there. That the state promised to help Amazon get access to a helipad didn't help. |
| The New York Post cover blared "Queens Ransom" next to a picture of the company founder, Jeff Bezos, laughing in a helicopter holding bags of cash. A hundred people protested at the Long Island City site, waving signs like one that read "Stay the Helipad Out." |
| Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democratic senator from New York, joined the chorus of skeptics. "One of the wealthiest companies in history should not be receiving financial assistance from taxpayers," she wrote on Twitter. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the incoming Democratic representative for parts of Queens, as well as the Bronx, said she had heard "outrage" from her constituents. |
| Until recently, Amazon barely involved itself in Seattle's civic politics. Its growth was steady for more than a decade, only kicking into high gear the past few years. For a while, Amazon's main involvement with city hall was more about small things like approvals for street vacations than major politics. |
| That began to change in 2015, when Amazon's real estate head, John Schoettler, who was deeply involved in the HQ2 search, led the local Chamber of Commerce. Earlier this year, Amazon publicly fought a new tax to pay for homeless services and affordable housing. But there was never a singular moment like this when Seattle got to ask: Do we want Amazon here? If so, do we want taxpayers to pay for it? |
| When news of a split HQ2 broke, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle said, "I'd call those branch offices." It's a good zinger, but while Seattle may want to call it a win, several experts pointed out to me that Amazon will now have three cities to pit against one another for decades to come. Talk about leverage. |
| And Amazon is still calling the two new locations headquarters. "We know there will be leaders and teams in all three headquarters as we map out the growth," Jay Carney, a senior vice president at Amazon, told me. "We are already a company that spans the country, with employees in over 45 states. I'm on the leadership team but live in D.C. and am in Seattle today. It reinforces what already exists for us." |
| How that division shakes out will be interesting to track. The New York office is already home to much of Amazon's growing advertising group, which has become almost an obsession among investors because of its high margins. That's a mix of the technical and creative work that's already thriving in the city. |
| Many had suggested that a Washington-area choice could signal a growing dependence on government contracts, like a $10 billion cloud deal for the Defense Department that Amazon isfavored to win. |
| But Amazon's agreement with Virginia specifically states that the incentives Amazon gets will decrease if more than 10 percent of the work done at that location is for federal contracts, something that reflects the state's goal of diversifying its economy away from government work. So what's Amazon's vision there? |
| Some other tech stories of note this week: |
| ■ I don't want to let HQ2 suck even more oxygen out of the room than it already has, so please take the time to read the investigation five incredible colleagues published on Wednesday. The report looks into how Facebook's top leadership failed to fully reckon with the company's complicity in political and social manipulation. It provides a rarely critical and comprehensive look into the top ranks of the company. |
| ■ Uber lost more than $1 billion last quarter, and its growth is slowing, Kate Conger reports. This news comes as the ride-hailing company marches toward a 2019 public offering. |
| ■ How weird is social media marketing? Sapna Maheshwari has one word for you: nanoinfluencers. |
| ■ And finally, just in case you think it's all bad news about tech this week, Farhad Manjoo has this charming love letter to Google Photos. As he said, "Who expects software to make them cry?" |
| Karen Weise writes about the technology industry in Seattle. You can follow her at: @KYWweise. |
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