Friday marks exactly one year of introspection for Dallas, 18 other American cities and Toronto in their pursuit of Amazon's now-famous second headquarters.

In the last 365 days, debates over the wisdom of forgoing future tax revenue to lure a leading technology company and the fastest-growing retailer in America became a cottage industry and even added to the lexicon.

Terms such as "prosperity bomb" reflected concerns that a rush for Amazon's promised 50,000 high-paying jobs would cause a housing crunch and displace residents. "Transparency" and "nondisclosure agreements" became big buzzwords in arguments for and against economic development incentives.

And HQ2 — an abbreviation that Amazon coined last September — now comes up 3.3 million times in a Google search.

Saturday Night Live even parlayed the frenzy into a hilarious skit with CEO Jeff Bezos listening to pitches from Boston, Atlanta, Newark and Miami. John Oliver's Last Week Tonight did a show on economic development inspired by HQ2, and it's been viewed on YouTube more than 6.1 million times.

After narrowing its search to 20 cities in January, Amazon went quiet.

"We have nothing new to comment on," Amazon spokesman Adam Sedo said in an emailed response Thursday. "We are committed to making a decision before the end of the year."

The Dallas Regional Chamber, which is shepherding the local HQ2 bid, also had no comment on the anniversary's passing.

Not since Boeing pitted Dallas, Denver and Chicago against one another in 2001 has a corporate relocation search been so visible, said Mark Arend, editor of Site Selection, a magazine that reports on the business of corporate attraction. "It's unusual to see a project of this size be so public," he said. "Some cities are wondering if they could even handle a project half this size. But they had to put their hat in the ring."

Tax breaks to win the project became an issue in Georgia's governor's race. In a Maryland election, a nominee for a county executive post felt compelled to address any uncertainty that he would support tax breaks offered by an official leaving office. Austin City Council member Leslie Poole called the lack of transparency in the city's HQ2 efforts "unfortunate." Officials who submitted Austin's proposal "threw a veil of secrecy over it," she said, and even the council didn't know what the proposal contained.

Lucrative incentives

Still, the process has been revealing about just what some states and cities are willing to offer to land a big one. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's office worked with city officials in Austin and Dallas to come up with incentives, but those packages haven't been disclosed.

The whopping figure of $1 billion has been bandied about the most. That's enough to build 70 elementary schools, based on actual costs reported by the fast-growing Frisco school district, or enough to pay Dallas' police officers and firefighters for two years, plus give them all raises.

Neighboring Arlington offered almost $1 billion in incentives.

So did Atlanta, Chicago and Newark, the latter of which proposed changing its city income tax structure for Amazon employees. New Jersey prepared a $7 billion offer. Maryland and its Montgomery County offered an incentive package worth as much as $8.5 billion.

Austin, home to Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market, wasn't sure it could handle the growth. Residents of Pittsburgh voiced concerns with actual protests, and the issue of transparency moved into court in Pennsylvania. Likewise in Minnesota, where a government watchdog group sued that state's economic development office, demanding that public records relating to HQ2 be shared with the public.

Amazon's public disclosure of very specific requirements inspired deep discussions about regional weaknesses and failings. Others ranked finalist cities by slicing up Amazon's requirements for technology workers, business environment and housing costs, areas where Dallas excelled.

Cities and states have seriously begun tackling shortfalls in transportation, all levels of education and quality-of-life issues. Just being selected as one of the 20 finalist cities that Amazon announced in January — after it had received proposals from 238 cities — earned the chosen regions some attention for doing some things right.

But no place considers itself a slam-dunk.

For the first time, Washington, D.C., and counties around it in Virginia and Maryland started working together as a region to solicit Amazon.

The Dallas Regional Chamber began to address the city's image that while it's a corporate headquarters magnet, it isn't a place where innovation happens. It completed a regional assessment together with Accenture, Southern Methodist University and United Way and came up with recommendations including at least $100 million to invest in startups.

The regional chamber, which led the Dallas-Fort Worth area's 175 chambers of commerce through the process, served as a clearinghouse to deal with Amazon. Amazon's scouts visited Dallas for two days in February to see for themselves.

Texas' chances

Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO, was in Dallas in April to speak at the George W. Bush Presidential Center but left no clues. His personal ties to Texas gave some hope that Bezos might steer the decision to the state where he spent summers growing up on his grandfather's ranch. Bezos owns a home in West Texas, and his Blue Origin space travel company launches its test rockets from Van Horn.

Amazon built its largest wind farm to date in West Texas and has opened 10 fulfillment centers in the state, including seven in Dallas-Fort Worth. The company says it has more than 20,500 employees in the state, and the number rises with seasonal jobs.

Many believe Amazon will offer consolation prizes to cities that ultimately lose out, and it's already spent billions in cities across the U.S. opening fulfillment centers and regional technology hubs.

In Dallas, Amazon Web Services employs more than 500 retail operations people, taking up more than 200,000 square feet in Galleria Tower Two.

Tech hubs

In May, Amazon expanded its Boston footprint, moving into a 430,000-square-foot building to house 2,000 employees in addition to the 1,200 already there and working on machine learning, speech science, cloud computing and robotics engineering. Last October, Amazon said it was consolidating Amazon Studios with its other entertainment divisions — IMDb, Amazon Video and World Wide Advertising — in its newly purchased historic Culver Studios in Los Angeles.

In Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia, where it employs 1,200 lobbyists, economic development staffers and tech employees working on a cloud system used by U.S. intelligence agencies, Amazon is expanding its Amazon Web Services staff to go after defense contracts. Amazon said earlier this year that it would hire an additional 2,000 people there.

Amazon is considered a front-runner for a Pentagon contract worth $10 billion for a secure cloud software called Jedi, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure.

Many believe Washington is a front-runner for other reasons — because Bezos owns the city's largest private residence and the influential Washington Post. Las Vegas oddsmakers have installed Northern Virginia as a heavy favorite. (Bettors consider Dallas to be the 15th-most-likely site.)

But Bezos also has Miami connections. He went to high school there and graduated as valedictorian. According to a report in the Miami Herald, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, visited a Miami nightclub over the Labor Day weekend. Another signal, perhaps?

Everyone is awaiting the winner.

Story was updated at 11:40 a.m. to correct the first name for Mark Arend.