[grantc]

The 20,000 families benefitting from housing in the Seattle metro area as a result of Amazon's investments in the community might define charitable vs. non-charitable differently than you. I've personally met the women and children benefitting from the $100M Amazon and its employees have donated to Mary's Place -- their lens is not yours. Your comments about AFE are a bit underdeveloped. File under no good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.

[atdrummond]

20,000 houses hardly makes up for the 12m square feet that Amazon inhabits in the Seattle Metro area, very little of which is built in such a way to contribute to a livable or affordable city. Their impact on the real estate situation is nowhere near positive even with this whitewashing.

[alach11]

Does it not? 12m / 20,000 = 600. So Amazon's real estate is displacing 20,000 households of a size of 600 square feet. And they've created 20,000 houses to offset that, which are probably larger than 600 square feet. Seems like a fair offset.

[boomboomsubban]

Building houses is a good thing, but you could make the project a for profit division of Amazon and I don't think what they're doing would drastically change.

Similar with their education program, some of it would change but I bet the base project could be seen as a worthwhile investment in the companies future. Saying these acts justify ending smile is silly.

[bombolo]

Wow they are investing in real estate! How generous!

[adave]

Its good but probably not the most effective or most wanted by customers which is what that point was with these donations.