Daily Crunch: Amazon doubles down on its partner program

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1. Amazon offers employees $10K and 3 months’ pay to start their own delivery businesses

Amazon’s partner program, first announced last year, includes access to the company’s delivery technology, hands-on training and a suite of other discounts for assets and services.

Now, the company says it also will fund former employees’ startup costs up to $10,000, as well as the equivalent of three months of their last gross salary.

2. Uber launches PIN feature to cut wait times at US airports, starting in Portland

Uber first developed the PIN feature — where it gives riders a one-time six-digit numeric code in an effort to speed up pickup times — to serve high-volume, high-density event venues.

3. CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415 parts per million for the first time in human history

Congratulations, humanity!

4. Friend portability is the must-have Facebook regulation

Josh Constine argues that the FTC needs to create an escape route for users from Facebook, so that worthy alternatives become viable options.

5. Hotstar, Disney’s Indian streaming service, sets new global record for live viewership

Around 18.6 million users simultaneously tuned into Hotstar’s website and app to watch the deciding game of the 12th edition of the Indian Premier League cricket tournament.

6. AWS remains in firm control of the cloud infrastructure market

Cloud infrastructure is a huge, growing market, and the companies behind Amazon are growing even faster. Yet it seems no matter how fast they grow, Amazon remains a dot on the horizon. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The team at Equity looks at Uber’s disappointing first day of public trading. Meanwhile, over at Original Content, we reviewed Netflix’s Ted Bundy film, “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.”