Big Tech pauses office expansion: The economic downturn has pushed beleaguered companies like Meta to rethink their strategies. Workers’ reluctance to return is another reason for companies to stall expansion plans.

The scale of Big Tech’s lobbying efforts: Sides lobbying for and against Big Tech regulation are intensifying their efforts before the Senate’s recess. Companies like Amazon are backing groups to stall regulation.

Amazon throws antitrust regulators a bone: The retailer is drastically reducing how many items it sells under its own brands, which may help alleviate government scrutiny into its business practices.

Amazon was once again the big winner of this year’s Prime Day: But inflation took its toll as shoppers focused on household essentials over big-ticket purchases.

Prime Day swoops in to fill the personal data vacuum: The two-day sales event is a chance for Amazon to eat up more of the digital ad market.

This year, Amazon will see $12.52 billion in Prime Day sales worldwide, per our estimates. The US will account for more than 60% of Prime Day sales, but outside of the US, sales growth will be stronger as Amazon brings the shopping event to more international markets.

Could influencers help mitigate against slowing Prime Day sales? Amazon is incorporating “creator houses” into its plans for this week’s sale.

As customer loyalty grows more elusive, retailers beef up member rewards: Walmart, Starbucks, and Sweetgreen are just some of the companies looking to sweeten the deal to keep customers coming back.

Prime Day isn’t impervious to economic slowdown, but it’ll do just fine: We still expect the event to generate more than $12.5 in revenues this year—and boost spending on other sites too.

US retail ecommerce sales will top $1 trillion this year, up 9.4% from $960.44 billion last year. Come 2026, more than $1 in $5 spent on retail will come from ecommerce channels.

Shopify offered a lifeline for merchants during the pandemic. Now, as the ecommerce environment grows more challenging, the company is devising new strategies to help brands expand their reach.

Retailers experiment with the role of the store: Gap, Jonathan Adler, and others are testing new retail concepts and tech to determine the best way to leverage their physical presences.

Big Tech post-Roe: As tech giants like Google respond to abortion rights loss, they face a quagmire of choices about strengthening digital privacy, censorship, and where to do business.

The Amazon way of management’s unanticipated long-term costs: The retailer is running out of people to hire in its US warehouses, which could hinder its service quality and growth.

Tech’s labor tug of war: Big Tech is raising pay and discouraging union efforts, but an increasing number of workers are banking on unions to give them a voice in negotiating working conditions and benefits.

Prime Day will once again prove to be a major retail event this year, not just for Amazon but for its competitors as well.

$52B chip bill stuck in legislative limbo: The CHIPS for America Act would help offset some of the losses suffered by American chipmakers or allow them to pursue expansion plans.

On today's episode, we discuss how much "Top Gun: Maverick" is helping movie theaters recover, why the number of American video game players is shrinking, the headwinds threatening air travel's recovery, how much money Spotify made from podcast ads, when Amazon may overtake Walmart as the largest retailer in the US, an unpopular opinion about the movie-viewing experience, how Bluetooth got its name, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Dave Frankland and Paul Verna and director of forecasting Oscar Orozco.

As EV adoption accelerates, the necessary charging infrastructure to support it lags behind in the US. The Biden administration has ambitious goals to get the country up to speed, but well-crafted implementation will be crucial to protecting the electrical grid. Part of the solution is harnessing the full potential of EV batteries to bolster energy supplies.

As of February 2022, nearly 30% US households with Wi-Fi had an Amazon Fire TV device. More than 20% owned an Echo smart speaker, Fire tablet, or both.