Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the opening of its second African office in Lagos, Nigeria. The opening of the Lagos office comes five years after its first office in Johannesburg was opened in 2017.
Egyptian fintech startup MoneyFellows has announced the first close of its Series B round funding with a US$31 million investment to help it accelerate its growth and move into new markets.
Following a recent ruling by India’s competition regulator, Google announced it has halted the enforcement of its Play Store billing policy in the country, which requires developers to pay up to 30% for in-app purchases. The announcement arrives days after the Competition Commission of India ordered Google to let app developers use alternative payment systems and fined it $113 million for abusing its market power. The country also issued a fine of $161.9 million on the company the previous week for being anti-competitive in the Android mobile device market.
There’s probably no limit to Amazon’s greed – because capitalism – but there are constraints as governments regulate BigTech more aggressively and, just maybe, the free market works its wonders. Amazon cited “seller sentiment related to the fee” in its statement pulling back from its planned 2% fee on sellers who don’t use its Prime fulfillment services. But looming antitrust cases likely had something to do with it.