Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
As we've chronicled before, Big Tech is at war with itself. Now, Microsoft is pitted against Amazon on their home turf.
Driving the news: Microsoft announced that it would commit $500 million to building affordable housing in Seattle. In doing so, it showed up its neighbor Amazon, which fought publicly and bitterly with the city of Seattle over a per-employee "homelessness tax." Microsoft has grabbed all the kudos in Seattle, even though Amazon is involved in a slew of charities itself.
The infighting is even more pronounced in Silicon Valley, where Salesforce is battling Twitter, while Apple is going after Facebook and Google.
- During the last election cycle, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey bickered over San Francisco's homelessness problem, with Benioff supporting a "homelessness tax" on tech companies, and Dorsey opposing it.
- And Apple CEO Tim Cook is charging forward against Facebook and Google — and calling for privacy regulation. Apple won the "2018 award for pouring salt in wounds of competitors," NYU's Scott Galloway says.
Go deeper: How the "big tech" colossus is splitting