> this really highlighted the kind of leverage a big company can hold over even a huge metropolis.

Agree, it was a gross display of cynical power. Amazon played a dozen large cities off each other, forcing each to bend over backward to offer up as much freebies as possible. In exchange for what? A tentative fungible "promise" to deliver 50000 high-pay jobs to the lucky city? In response, even poor cities like Philadelphia strived (in secret) to come up with "proposals" to one of the richest and most ascendant companies on the globe.

And what ultimately happened? Oh, turns out, it wasn't an HQ2 after all, it is now an HQ2 AND HQ3 in TWO cities with half the number of jobs each.

I sort of expect such behavior from a greedy American corporation, but what makes me sad is the pathetic appeasement from the cities courting this.

Good for the people of NYC, who finally opened their eyes to the bullshit.