Bias note: I work at Amazon but I don't actually know anything or speak for Amazon. I'm guessing just as much as you are.
I knew people who left to go work on this project in I'm going to say early 2013. Lots of them. Assume Amazon put 100+ engineers on it, each probably making 200k/year in total comp. For five years. So that's a low ballpark of $100 million just for the engineer salaries. Now add in hardware, real estate, etc.
This was not a $10m project. But this is Amazon, where big investments in crazy ideas that might fail is normal. Just look at that friggin' Fire Phone.
Edit: and for the record, all those people who left to work on it were bastards and wouldn't tell us what they were building. Not even if you bought them beer.
I knew people who left to go work on this project in I'm going to say early 2013. Lots of them. Assume Amazon put 100+ engineers on it, each probably making 200k/year in total comp. For five years. So that's a low ballpark of $100 million just for the engineer salaries. Now add in hardware, real estate, etc.
This was not a $10m project. But this is Amazon, where big investments in crazy ideas that might fail is normal. Just look at that friggin' Fire Phone.
Edit: and for the record, all those people who left to work on it were bastards and wouldn't tell us what they were building. Not even if you bought them beer.