Category: News

Amazon has opened it’s world’s largest office in Hyderabad.

New Delhi: Amazon just opened its biggest office building in the world in the Indian city of Hyderabad.The online retail giant’s new campus in the city’s financial district opened on Wednesday. It covers 9.5 acres and has 1.8 million square feet of office space, making it “Amazon’s single largest building in the world in terms of total area,” according to the company.The building can accommodate up to 15,000 employees, nearly a quarter of Amazon’s full-time India workforce of more than 62,000. The company also has 155,000 contract workers in the country, making India its biggest base outside the United States.The Hyderabad campus is the first office outside the United States that Amazon fully owns.

Amazon (AMZN) has poured billions of dollars into its India business in recent years. It is expanding its operations and reportedly looking for stakes in local retailers as it battles Walmartfor an e-commerce market that Morgan Stanley estimates will be worth $200 billion by 2027.”This new Amazon campus building is a tangible commitment to that long-term thinking and our plans for India,” Amit Agarwal, the company’s India head, said in a statement.The prize is huge. India has over 600 million internet users, but the majority of its population still isn’t online. Amazon is trying to cash in on that potential by looking to expand its grocery business, creating more Indian content for its Prime Video streaming service and even making its mobile app available in India’s most popular language, Hindi.

“This is Day One for us in India, and we look forward to creating an environment where diverse contributions are welcomed and innovation encouraged for the long term,” John Schoettler, Amazon’s vice president of global real estate and facilities, said in a statement.The new Hyderabad campus will eventually be expanded to cover 68 acres — roughly the equivalent of 65 football fields, Amazon said. The tech city was Amazon’s first point of entry into India in 2004. It is also home to other big global names, including Microsoft’s(MSFT) India headquarters and Ikea’s first India store.

Julia Roberts, Rob Lowe, and even current Secretary of Energy Rick Perry were among the many celebrities, politicians, and regular people who recently shared this Instagram post in an effort to protect their photos:

INSTAGRAM

Like lots of less famous users, they didn’t understand that the news was a complete hoax.

What Is the Instagram Hoax?

This particular hoax isn’t new. It first popped up on Facebook in 2012 and again in 2015 before the latest round of celebrity postings. This time around, people who shared the image on Instagram did so to protect themselves. The post states that:

“with this statement, I give notice to Instagram [that] it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents.”

All of which is in response to a false rumor that Instagram will have ownership of your content, ambiguously, “tomorrow.”

As you may have guessed, the incendiary and alarming post has no merit.

Stephanie Otway, a spokesperson for Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, told CBS News, “There’s no truth to this post.”

Of course there isn’t. But there is a mass misunderstanding of the social platforms that have become the critical infrastructure of our lives. Instagram accesses and analyzes a variety of posted content including hashtags, comments, keywords, and geotags. Then it uses this information to create customer segments that it sells to marketers. Marketers then serve ads via the platform to those identified.

In joining the platform, you’ve agreed to let your data be used, anonymized, and sold in exchange for advertisers advertising to you. Instagram wants your data so that it can sell it to those who want to sell things to you. The hoax allegations don’t make sense in the context of the Instagram business model.