Developments, updates, and announcements; here's what stood out to us this week.
The GDPR and You
The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, went into effect today, May 25th, after catching most businesses off guard... even though a two-year preparation period preceded the due date. You may have noticed a wave of privacy policy update emails from your favorite companies; they've all scrambled to implement changes at last minute. It's assumed that few entities are completely prepared, and that includes regulators. Procrastination and negligence aside, the GDPR calls for changes that scale depending on the amount of data collected by companies that conduct business in the EU. Failing to comply can lead to hefty fines and a cascade of problems in the future. However, although we've reached GDPR judgment day, only massively successful EU-involved companies face an immediate high risk (although any unprepared business with EU customers is at risk).
Read more about the GDPR on The Verge's blog post.
Stalk Your Purchases with Amazon's Map Tracker
If you thought tracking your pizza order was helpful, imagine tracking your online orders in real-time. Amazon, as always, is 10 steps ahead of their competition with their new tracking feature. Amazon Map Tracking is now available for all U.S. customers and it's really as cool as it sounds. On delivery day, the feature provides users with their Amazon package's real-time coordinates, an estimated delivery time, and a count of how many stops remain before arriving. For now, the feature doesn't consider packages handled by FedEx, UPS, and USPS; only deliveries handled by Amazon logistics qualify.
Mashable's post further explains the feature.
Adobe Acquires... Magento?
In a move that few people (if any at all) saw coming, Adobe acquired Magento Commerce for $1.68 billion. Adobe is a leader in the world of content creation and marketing, and now they have their sights set on ecommerce. Magento got its start in 2008, was purchased by eBay in 2011, and then went private in 2015. Known as a titan in the world of ecommerce, Magento is definitely an interesting and powerful acquisition for Adobe. MarTech Today's Barry Levine summarized the acquisition's potential nicely: "The acquisition boosts the e-commerce capabilities of Adobe's Experience Cloud to take on the shopping muscle its competitors have added, possibly spinning this off into a separate Commerce Cloud."
Read Barry's full post on MarTech Today.
