*By Mike Teich*
Amazon shares jumped nearly 4 percent Friday after the e-commerce juggernaut delivered blockbuster earnings results on Thursday.
The tech giant impressed investors by delivering operating profit of $1.9 billion. Amazon's blockbuster numbers reflected its success in retail sales and growth in its cloud services business, said Michael Pachter, an analyst from Wedbush Securities.
Amazon also announced that it would be raising its Prime membership fee by $20, up to $119 a year. Pachter said the "odds are less than 1 percent that there is a decline in membership" as a result of the price hike.
Pachter compared Amazon Prime's cost to Netflix, noting that Prime was priced below Amazon's video-streaming rival and offers content that is "75 percent as good."
Electronic Arts, the video game maker of “Madden NFL,” “The Sims,” and other popular titles, is being acquired and taken private for about $52.5 billion in what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private-equity firms.
Merriam-Webster has fully revised its popular “Collegiate” dictionary with over 5,000 new words. They include “petrichor,” “dumbphone” and “ghost kitchen.” Also “cold brew,” “rizz,” “dad bod,” “hard pass,” “cancel culture” and more.
YouTube will offer creators a way to rejoin the streaming platform if they were banned for violating COVID-19 and election misinformation policies that are no longer in effect.
