Amazon finally names locations for new headquarters, ending its cutthroat competition for tax cuts and incentives

After a highly publicized and should-have-been-criminally manipulative search that lasted for more than a year, the corporate megagiant Amazon has finally revealed the locations of new headquarters it plans to establish in North America.

Two cities were selected, neither of which is Vancouver, Canada.

Today (November 13), Amazon officially named Long Island City, New York (across the river from Manhattan), and Crystal City, Virginia (just outside Washington D.C.), as future hosts to major office developments that the company has dubbed "HQ2".

Amazon's original corporate headquarters will remain in Seattle.

According to an insinuation in the Wall Street Journal, the selections of New York and D.C. are somehow politically insidious.

"The decision effectively gives Amazon a major presence in three coastal hubs that politically lean left, at a time when tech companies are under scrutiny for their perceived elitism and liberal social views," reads the financial newspaper's story about today's news. "Amazon declined to comment," adds the report.

Former mayor Gregor Robertson once hoped to bring HQ2 to Vancouver. His ambitions had the support of B.C. premier John Horgan and regional business associations including the Vancouver Board of Trade and Vancouver Economic Commission.

Amazon crushed those dreams last January when it revealed a 20-city short list for its new headquarters that did not include Vancouver.

That might have been for the best. As critics have pointed out, Amazon encouraged cities to compete against one another to host its new headquarters in ways that essentially forced them to offer incentives that could translate into lost tax revenue, depressed wages, and higher housing costs.

Amazon's 2017 revenue was approximately US$177.886 billion, the company employs more than 600,000 people, and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is sometimes the world's richest person, posessing a net worth of US$137.6 billion in November 2018.

The corperation already has offices in Vancouver that employ several thousand people.

Last April, the company unveiled plans to move into the city’s old Canada Post building that occupies a block of Georgia Street between Homer and Hamilton streets. A major redevelopment of the old complex had been winding its way through various bureaucracies at city hall. Amazon has said it hopes to occupy 416,000 square feet and employ some 3,000 people there.