Quote:
Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
First and foremost for Amazon this is a political decision, they are a company desperately fighting to keep their almost non existent tax paying status in most jurisdictions, Amazon is the poster child for why the developed economies should get together to tax tech companies who avoid paying the kinds of taxes most companies get stuck with.
As such much as Bezos may despise Trump he isn't going to do anything overt to lose the US's support of the companies fight against getting taxed in the EU etc, therefore the choice will be in the US.
Secondly the company is not looking to rent offices, this is a new build massive city within a city, so other than a large amount of available land with decent transportation, it doesn't even have to be cheap, just available, then any city that has the space will do.
I personally cant see any reason the company would have two massive campuses on the west coast, logically one on either coast makes sense or one massive one in Seattle.
The main thing a Canadian city has going against them, other than being in Canada and so politically stupid for the company, is that we don't have the concentration of colleges and University's in one City that feeding a 50,000 employees tech company really needs, these kind of operations tend to like being in education hubs with 2 or 3 large colleges within close proximity to recruit from endlessly
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Good post. This issue plays way too heavily on heart strings and very few are willing to look past their hopes and dreams and focus on the reality of the situation.
A Canadian city is highly unlikely to begin with, then a second tier Canadian city is even less likely. You can eliminate the cities on the west coast, so Vancouver is out. You can eliminate the cities where taxes are ridiculously high, or have regulations that increase the cost of doing business, so Montreal is out. Leave Toronto IMO. Calgary can't compete with Toronto.
Can Toronto compete with American cities? That is the question. To me, there are a number of east coast cities that meet the needs Amazon identifies, and does so in a way Toronto cannot compete. I stand by my assessment that Amazon will go where they can replicate the Seattle operation, except in the eastern time zone. I believe that the reason Amazon wants to build a new office is to work off the AWS model and provide redundancy and service the largest chunk of their market.
NYT takes a look at it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...arters-be.html