The Latest News of Amazon’s Collaboration with Microsoft and Acquisition of Whole Foods

Amazon and Microsoft announced yesterday that Alexa will be able to talk to Cortana, and Cortana will be able to talk to Alexa. You will be able to turn to your Echo device and say, “Alexa, open Cortana,” or turn to your Microsoft Windows 10 device and say, “Cortana, open Alexa.” As much as I love technology calibrating to make ease of use for technology better aren’t most people either Alexa users or Cortana but not both?

Per their press release Alexa customers will be able to access Cortana‘s unique features like booking a meeting or accessing work calendars, reminding you to pick up flowers on your way home, or reading your work email – all using just your voice. Similarly, Cortana customers can ask Alexa to control their smart home devices, shop on Amazon.com, interact with many of the more than 20,000 skills built by third-party developers, and much more. Alexa and Cortana will begin talking to each other later this year.

This comes after Amazon and Whole Foods Market announced that Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market will close on Monday August 28, 2017. As a down payment on their vision, Whole Foods Market will offer lower prices starting Monday on a selection of best-selling grocery staples across its stores, with more to come. This is HUGE; some people don’t shop at Whole Foods due to high prices.

Per Amazon and the Whole Foods press release here’s what will be new in Whole Foods Market stores and what customers can expect over time as the two companies integrate:

  • Customers will enjoy lower prices on products like Whole Trade bananas, organic avocados, organic large brown eggs, organic responsibly-farmed salmon and tilapia, organic baby kale and baby lettuce, animal-welfare-rated 85% lean ground beef, creamy and crunchy almond butter, organic Gala and Fuji apples, organic rotisserie chicken, 365 Everyday Value organic butter, and much more.
  • In the future, after certain technical integration work is complete, Amazon Prime will become Whole Foods Market’s customer rewards program, providing Prime members with special savings and other in-store benefits.
  • Whole Foods Market’s healthy and high-quality private label products—including 365 Everyday Value, Whole Foods Market, Whole Paws and Whole Catch—will be available through Amazon.com, AmazonFresh, Prime Pantry and Prime Now.
  • Amazon Lockers will be available in select Whole Foods Market stores. Customers can have products shipped from Amazon.com to their local Whole Foods Market store for pick up or send returns back to Amazon during a trip to the store.

In addition, Amazon and Whole Foods Market technology teams will begin to integrate Amazon Prime into the Whole Foods Market point-of-sale system, and when this work is complete, Prime members will receive special savings and in-store benefits.

It will be interesting to see how these collaborations pan out but Amazon is definitely on fire right now with building and expanding its empire.

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Source: Amazon, Microsoft, Whole Foods Market