AWS is a direct competitor in retail market it's common for big companies not to chose AWS if they are in same business, with Microsoft Azure it's a bit different story as they are the IT company not like Amazon.
That's Norway man it cannot be compared with rest of the world. In Albania or Balkan countries it would be very dangerous to leak such and info, people could die or be kidnaped or been looked differently, normally u don't tell your salary to anyone just like that.
wow that is big lay off, but how they decided what 900 employees to lay off wtf? could they give them some opportunity to grow within the company for some different role? I mean on the other side this is really shit news, but giving that 3 months of benefits and paycheck is kind of Ok i guess in this situation so people can start looking for another job.
You comment is from your perspective, but you will never know what has happen in background on some higher level. Steeling information is more of an art and google does it and other big companies quite good.
Well am not sure how helpful this will be, but you would need to develop a framework for yourself. Normally a simple note taking while studying specific topic can help for later to refresh the knowledge.