Luxembourg has granted illegal tax benefits to Amazon of around 250 million euros. As a result, Amazon paid substantially less tax than other businesses. Because of this unfair tax advantage, the European Union has now ordered Amazon to pay back 250 million euros in taxes to Luxembourg.

Amazon has announced it will open a research center in Germany that's focused on developing artificial intelligence to improve the customer experience. Amazon wants to create over a hundred high-skilled jobs in machine learning at this new Amazon Research Center.

Amazon will launch in Sweden. This rumor has been going around for quite some time, but now it's just a matter of when, not if, Amazon will open Amazon.se to the Swedish public. Now the CEO of comparison site Pricerunner says Amazon will launch in Sweden very soon. "It's happening in the next 1 to 12 months."

The entry of Amazon into the Swish ecommerce market seems imminent. The American ecommerce giant has signed a cooperation agreement with Swiss Post, which means the postal agency will carry out customs clearance for Amazon in the near future.

So far this year, 363.439 new sellers joined Amazon marketplaces in Europe. Among new sellers on all marketplaces that Amazon has worldwide, 36.3 percent registered on Amazon in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France or Spain.

In the future, Amazon wants to open physical stores in Germany, similar to the stores it opened in the United States. According to Ralf Kleber, VP Germany at Amazon.com, it's not a question of whether, but when this will happen.

Amazon has launched its business marketplace Amazon Business in France. The B2B ecommerce website is now available on three Amazon marketplaces in Europe. Amazon UK and Amazon Germany already gave business customers the opportunity to buy business supplies through Amazon Business.

Amazon will create 2,000 permanent jobs in France this year. This means that there will be about 7,500 people working for Amazon in France at the end of this year. The new positions are open to people with various levels of experience, training and skills.

Amazon has confirmed it has plans to launch an online grocery service in France. Since the launch of Amazon Fresh in the US in 2016, the American company is focusing more and more on selling food online.

Amazon will launch Amazon Prime Now grocery deliveries in France this year. Thanks to a partnership with French retailer Monoprix, a subsidiary of Casino Group, Prime Now customers will be able to order groceries sourced by Monoprix through the Prime Now app and website.

Amazon Prime users in France are now able to place 1-click orders on tens of millions of products that ship with Prime. The US ecommerce company has launched virtual Dash buttons in France, two years after the physical Dash buttons were announced.

Amazon has updated both its mobile shopping app and its mobile website, so customers can now browse and ship millions of products to their country. The 'International Shopping' experience is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Brazilian and German and 25 currencies, with more to be added later this year.

Amazon will soon launch Amazon.com.tr, a localized version of its website, dedicated to Turkish consumers. Amazon will not only have its own website in Turkey, but also its own warehouse and office.

Twenty years after Amazon started with dedicated ecommerce websites in Europe, the US company is still struggling on this continent. Mostly, it has trouble gaining serious traction in apparel and footwear, key parts of its dominance in the US. What makes it so hard for Amazon to achieve the same success in Europe?

It may not come as a surprise, but of all online stores German consumers visit, Amazon is the one they spend the most of their time. The top ten of online stores where users spend the most time also consists of Chinese ecommerce giant AliExpress, shopping app Wish and online flea market Shpock.