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In this articleAMZNJeff Bezos takes a look at the New Shepard rocket booster on the landing pad after a successful NS-15 flight and landing in April 2021.Blue OriginJeff Bezos will fly on the first passenger flight of his space company Blue Origin, which the company plans to launch on July 20, the billionaire announced Monday.”I want to go on this flight because it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do all my life,” Bezos said in a video posted to his Instagram.Bezos’ brother Mark will join him, as will the winner of an auction being held for one of the seats. The highest bid stands at $2.8 million as of Monday morning, five days before the auction closes.”I wasn’t even expecting him to say that he was going to be on the first flight,” Mark Bezos said in the video. “What a remarkable opportunity, not only to have this adventure but to do it with my best friend.”Blue Origin’s space tourism system New Shepard, a rocket that carries a capsule to the edge of space, has flown more than a dozen successful test flights without passengers on board, including one in April at the company’s facility in the Texas desert.New Shepard is designed to carry up to six people on a ride past the edge of space, with the capsules on previous test flights reaching an altitude of more than 340,000 feet (more than 100 kilometers). The capsule has massive windows to give passengers a view, spending a few minutes in zero gravity before returning to Earth.Jeff Bezos opens the hatch of the New Shepard capsule after a test flight in April 2021.Blue OriginThe rocket launches vertically, with the booster detaching and returning to land at a concrete pad nearby. The capsule’s return is slowed by a set of parachutes, before softly landing in the desert.”To see the Earth from space, it changes you,” the Amazon CEO said. “It’s an adventure; it’s a big deal for me.”Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and continues to wholly own the company, funding it through share sales of his Amazon stock.July 20 will mark the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro.Get stock picks, analyst calls, exclusive interviews and access to CNBC TV. Sign up to start a free trial today.

In this articleAAPLGOOGLFBAMZNThis photograph taken on September 28, 2017, shows a smartphone being operated in front of the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon web giants.Damien Meyer | AFP | Getty ImagesThe world’s biggest tech companies are facing a corporate tax avoidance crackdown after the Group of Seven most developed economies agreed a historic deal Saturday.The G-7 backed a U.S. proposal that calls for corporations around the world to pay a minimum 15% tax on profits. The reforms, if finalized, would affect the largest companies in the world with profit margins of at least 10%.Looking ahead, the G-7 hopes to achieve a wider agreement on the new tax proposals next month at a gathering of the expanded G-20 finance ministers.Asked whether Amazon and Facebook would be among the companies targeted by the proposal, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she believes they would “qualify by almost any definition.”Here’s how America’s tech giants reacted to the news:AmazonAmazon said the agreement “marks a welcome step forward” in efforts to “bring stability to the international tax system.””We hope to see discussions continue to advance with the broader G20 and Inclusive Framework alliance,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC by email.FacebookNick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, welcomed the G-7 deal and said the social networking giant “has long called for reform of the global tax rules.”The agreement is a “significant first step towards certainty for businesses and strengthening public confidence in the global tax system,” Clegg tweeted Saturday.”We want the international tax reform process to succeed and recognize this could mean Facebook paying more tax, and in different places.”GoogleA spokesperson for Google told Sky News that the company strongly supported the initiative and hoped for a “balanced and durable” agreement.Apple wasn’t immediately available for a comment on the G-7 agreement when contacted by CNBC.The tech tax debateTech giants have long been criticized for paying little in taxes despite their size. Amazon and other companies have been accused of avoiding tax by shifting revenue and profits through tax havens or low-tax countries. The companies insist they’re doing nothing wrong from a legal standpoint, which is why policymakers are calling for reforms.Amazon infamously paid no U.S. federal income tax in 2018, despite booking more than $11 billion in profits. The low tax bill stemmed largely from tax cuts in 2017, carryforward losses from years when the company wasn’t profitable, and tax credits for massive research and development investment and share-based employee compensation.Some countries, such as Britain, France and Italy, have introduced a digital services tax in an effort to rake in more cash from large tech firms. The aim was to implement a solution for the interim while global officials hash out details for international tax rules.But this has led to friction with the United States, which under President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to impose tariffs on French goods over the issue.Meanwhile, some analysts have argued the deal doesn’t go far enough, while others said there was a long road ahead.George Dibb, head of the Centre for Economic Justice at the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), described the deal as a “major step forward,” but said there were still “big questions” surrounding the minimum tax level.”We would like to see something a lot closer to 25%,” he told CNBC Monday.”The Biden administration came into these negotiations with an opening offer of 21% but I think the big fight at the G-7 over Friday and Saturday was over the wording, about whether it would say ‘15%′ or ‘at least 15%’ and because we have that wording now of ‘at least 15%’ the door is still open for negotiation,” he told Squawk Box Europe.

In this articleNWSASundar Pichai, chief executive officer at Google LLC, speaks during the Google Cloud Next ’19 event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 9, 2019.Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesFrance’s competition watchdog has fined Google 220 million euros ($268 million) for abusing its market power in the online advertising industry.The French Competition Authority said Monday Google had unfairly sent business to its own services, and discriminated against the competition. Google has agreed to end some of its self-preferencing practices, the watchdog said.The investigation found that Google gave preferential treatment to its DFP advertising server, which allows publishers of sites and applications to sell their advertising space, and its SSP AdX listing platform, which organizes auction processes and allows publishers to sell their “impressions” or advertising inventory to advertisers. Google’s rivals and publishers suffered as a result, the regulator said.Isabelle de Silva, president of the French Competition Authority, said in a statement that the decision is the first in the world “to look at the complex algorithmic auction processes by which online advertising ‘display’ operates.”She added that the investigation revealed processes by which Google favored itself over its competitors on both advertising servers and supply-side platforms, which are pieces of software used by publishers to manage, sell and optimize ad space on their websites and mobile apps.”These very serious practices have penalized competition in the emerging online advertising market, and have enabled Google not only to preserve but also to increase its dominant position,” said de Silva.”This sanction and these commitments will make it possible to re-establish a level playing field for all actors, and the ability of publishers to make the most of their advertising spaces.”The investigation comes after U.S.-based News Corp, French newspaper Le Figaro and the Belgian press group Rossel filed a complaint against Google.Regulators across Europe are clamping down on the major U.S. tech giants amid concerns that they wield too much power on the bloc’s 700 million plus citizens.Last week, Facebook was hit by two antitrust probes from regulators in the U.K. and Europe.The European Commission has launched probes into Amazon, Google and Microsoft over the last few years, while the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority has also launched probes into Google and Apple since it became an independent regulator in its own right in January following Britain’s exit from the EU.Google did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

In this articleZE594-CNVisitors walk past BYD Tang and other electric vehicles at the carmaker’s booth at the Auto Shanghai 2021 show on April 27, 2021.Qilai Shen| Bloomberg | Getty ImagesBEIJING — Chinese automaker BYD announced Monday it shipped off the first batch of vehicles for a planned delivery of 1,500 electric cars to Norway by the end of this year.The company, which is backed by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, said 100 units of its all-electric Tang SUV shipped Monday from Shanghai, and are set to arrive at dealerships in Norway toward the end of the summer.The cars are slated to sell for 599,900 Norwegian kroner ($72,418) each, according to BYD. The company said it is working with Scandinavian car distributor, RSA, for deliveries and customer service.A representative for RSA did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment. The distributor’s official website has a link to a page on BYD Norway.Chinese start-ups’ gateway to EuropeChinese electric car start-ups Xpeng and Nio are also making inroads into Norway, where electric vehicles have dominated new passenger car sales for the last three years, per the Norwegian Road Federation.Xpeng said it delivered more than 300 units of its G3 SUV to Norway in the first quarter, after sending 100 cars to the market in December. The start-up plans to deliver an unspecified amount of its P7 sedan to the market in the second half of the year.Nio plans to begin delivering its ES8 SUV to Norway in September, with the ET7 sedan set for local deliveries in 2022. The company is set to open a flagship “Nio House” store in Oslo in the third quarter.Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC ProCiti upgrades Nio, says growing EV demand in China can lift stock more than 50%JPMorgan says buy puts in flagging momentum stocks like TeslaThe battery market is booming. One company believes it’s made a key change to how they’re made