[gnicholas]

I would often forget to type "smile" when searching for stuff, but then I'd just add to cart, close the window, and go to my cart via smile. That seemed to work.

But I think we can all see this for what it is — belt tightening. Will they increase other philanthropic activities to the tune of what they were previously giving away via Smile? I would be very, very surprised if so.

[neodymiumphish]

They actually might. Whatever the overhead was in managing and tracking payments to that many charities based on payments from that many customers had to be significant. Instead, they could just throw 50 mil across the top 10 each year and not have to deal with managing the smile program anymore.

[gnicholas]

I imagine there could be ways to make their philanthropic donations more efficient. What I'm saying is I doubt they are actually going to donate this amount, and achieve greater impact (however that is measured). I imagine they are going to launch programs that they were already going to launch, donating to whatever charities they favor for other reasons. For example, if they're building a new office somewhere, they can give a bunch of money to charities in that community, to build goodwill in the community.

But these donations are not done purely for altruistic reasons — they're calculated decisions that also help the corporate entity. There's nothing wrong with this, and they'd still be doing good. But it's not the same as letting your customers decide where to donate hundreds of millions of dollars.

[micromacrofoot]

big corporate donations require 0 engineers, that’s a huge savings

[m463]

> belt tightening

I suspect this is the time when the charities need smile donations the most.

[Fatnino]

Charity starts at home.

Specifically Bezos' bottom line.

[fooqux]

Wrong belt.