Apple is taking a page out of Amazon's playbook by teasing its new campus

Apple CEO Tim Cook is taking a page out of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' playbook.

Apple announced on Wednesday, among other initiatives, that it plans to build a new campus in the United States, as part of an effort to hire 20,000 new Apple employees over the next five years.

Where will the new campus go? Apple said only that it will be announced later this year, and declined to comment if it already had a location in mind.

The whole process sounds a lot like Amazon's process for what it calls "HQ2," in which the e-commerce giant solicited bids from American cities for where it should spend an estimated $5 billion build a new, second headquarters for 50,000 employees.

But while Amazon openly invited a bidding war, with 50 cities whose officials are preparing packages of tax breaks and other perks for the tech company, Apple didn't comment on whether it was soliciting bids or planned to have municipalities compete for the new campus.
It's not Apple's style to do a public contest - but given that Amazon received 238 different bids from cities, it's safe to say that there are some economic development agencies putting together packages for Cook and Apple.
Apple is no stranger to the game of getting tax breaks in exchange for creating jobs.

So it won't be surprising if Apple's new campus has a special tax status negotiated with state or local governments - even if Apple isn't holding a public auction of sorts, the way Amazon is.

Here's a short, incomplete list of recent tax breaks Apple has received in the past decade:

$89 million in tax breaks from Reno, Nevada and the state of Nevada for a warehouse to hold parts for Apple servers, which was mentioned in Wednesday's announcement.
$208 million in property and sales tax breaks from Waukee, Iowa and Iowa for a $1.4 billion data center expected to creat 50 jobs.
Millions of dollars in tax breaks for a Reno, Arizona facility that was intended to be a sapphire screen factory for the iPhone but is now a data center.
Over $30 million in tax abatements from Prineville, Oregon, in exchange for jobs at a data center.
As much as $300 million in state tax breaks over 30 years for a data center in Maiden, North Carolina.
Although Axios reports that Apple isn't "putting out a big request for proposals," given that some municipalities are putting together packages worth as much as $7 billion in tax incentives for Amazon, Apple would be irresponsible not to see what city and state governments are willing to pay for Apple's shingle.