Talk:Amazon (company)

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Audio Samples

I hadn't been on amazon for a while and when I went there today I noticed that they no longer have their own Amazon audio player for sampling albums. Anyone know why this happened? That audio player was good, it loaded much faster than Real or WMP. Was the amazon audio player removed because of a legal issue or something? e- Furthermore, I just realized I can't get either the WMP or Real audio samples to work in their respective players, grrrrrrrr. What the heck?

Recommendations and Collaborative Filtering

Amazon was one of the pioneers in using collaborative filtering to create links on its site. The article probably should mention these. The features I'm thinking of show up on product pages as "customers who purchased" and "customers who shopped for". The former was invented for Amazon by Greg Linden of Findory, and the latter was invented by me. Both are on USPTO, and I think Greg and co-worker Brent Smith wrote up the former for the IEEE. --Zippy 08:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Miscellaneous old discussions =

I'm not sure what happened here, but the page for Amazon.com can no longer be accessed!

Works for me. The Anome 17:34 Sep 24, 2002 (UTC)

Is the inclusion of the "Boycott Amazon!" link appropriate? Lukobe 2/18/04

Probably, but if there are other stated opinions out there (or even a rebuttal by the company), it should be added as well. I have moved the link to the bottom, as in an encyclopedic article about Amazon.com, it's simply not the most important link. Eike 04:28, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

The boycott has ended, in fact it ended almost two years ago. The link should be preserved, in my opinion. I'd update the description, but it says the page will be locked in a few minutes (presumably to prevent the link to amazon.com from being replaced with "affilate" links). --TexasDex 19:46, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

Merge in info from Jeff Bezos?

The article Jeff Bezos contains information about Amazon.com history that's not here. I think that info should be moved from that article to this one. — TreyHarris 21:25, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. The information under the heading "Rise of Amazon.com" in Jeff Bezos would be more appropriate in Amazon.com. Don't forget to add a see also link to Amazon.com. --Jeff 22:08, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)

Beacon Hill?

Recently, the intro changed from:

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) is an American electronic commerce company based in Seattle, Washington.

to:

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) is an American electronic commerce company based on Seattle, Washington's Beacon Hill.

This edit is odd to me. First off, I don't think I've ever seen a company be identified with its neighborhood before. (Except for Wall Street, but that isn't a neighborhood, and most of the companies "on Wall Street" are actually somewhere else in Manhattan, or even in Jersey City.) Secondly, why Beacon Hill? That Amazon.com is based in Seattle I don't dispute, but more workers work in the International District than in Beacon Hill. What controls? Jeff Bezos's office? I'd like to see it go back to just Seattle. --TreyHarris 03:07, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The location of the corporate headquarters appears in some other articles, e.g., Safeco Corporation, Todd Pacific Shipyards. It could certainly be moved out of the introductory sentence, though (which I'll do). As for why Beacon Hill, doesn't CEO's office location control? I know Bezos and his lieutenants work up there--many other important departments as well--and I'm not so sure there are more people down in Union Station than up in PacMed, actually... --Lukobe 05:24, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

OK, I moved location info to a different section and added some more details. By the way, hello to a fellow linguistics student! --Lukobe 06:04, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Different stores

If i'm located in denmark and order item foo from the .com, .co.uk .de and .jp store, will i get different prices? What is the difference in shipping costs if any? -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 00:09, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

You want http://www.amazon.com/help, http://www.amazon.co.uk/help, http://www.amazon.de/hilfe, and http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/1039576. --Lukobe 00:50, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

I just made some checks and at least one item in stock on .com was not avalible on .co.uk, perhaps something should be written about these internal differences. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 07:34, 2004 Nov 24 (UTC)

There is a site that does exactly this comparison (price at every one of the 6 amazon international stores), it even add shipping costs and calculates the currency depending on the user country, and that's a useful site for international amazon users, really. It's called Pricenoia.com. I updated it on the wiki page but was removed with a link spam comment, so up to you. Alarmen 13:12, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Old Amazon (feminist) bookstore?

I typed in "Amazon bookstore" in the search box, looking for that famous original feminist bookstore, and was redirected to the Amazon.com page. I understand that in spite of the use of the same tradmark in the same industry, that they are totally different entities. Any chance there can be another article on the feminist bookstore and maybe a disambiguation page and some cross links? How about at least a nod to the original on the Amazon.com page?

There's something at Amazon Bookstore now. --Lukobe 23:20, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

I was also looking for the Amazon Bookstore (the feminist one) and noticed that the page Amazon bookstore redirects to the Amazon.com page but Amazon Bookstore (notice the difference in capitalization difference) contains the disambiguation page. I'm going to move the disambiguation page from the double capitalized page to the other one so it better fits the Naming Conventions. David 18:16, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

I was surprised that this page never mentioned the lawsuit from the older bookstore, so I've added that. --mvc 15:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

amazon.com sued the feminist bookstore by that name so they could not use the name. this was in spite of the fact that they had used it first. they got their really nasty lawyers out there and crushed the women's bookstore

Amazon prime

Deserves a mention. --ZephyrAnycon 19:13, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Mechanical Turk

Anyone want to have a go at Mechanical Turk?

Turking is still relatively low-profile, but I think enough interest has been generated in it, and I know I have seen enough independent media coverage of it, to cover it here with references. However, considering that Amazon Mechanical Turk is a relatively sizable and thorough article, I believe a link to the full article would be sufficient for inclusion in the Amazon.com article. It's a relatively small facet of the overall Amazon empire and we run the risk of the page getting too lengthy. I'll at least make a section header and direct readers to the full article. Any input, please? LeSaint 19:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymity

A 2002 glitch in Amazon.com's review system revealed that many well-established authors were anonymously giving themselves glowing reviews, with some revealed to be anonymously giving "rival" authors terrible reviews. The glitch in the system was fixed and those reviews have since been removed or made anonymous.

"Or made anonymous"? ... umm... weren't they already anonymous? You can't make an anonymous comment anonymous. It already is. - furrykef (Talk at me) 20:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is not true that sounds really suspect i am going to delete that if someone dosent prove me wrong soon.

Affiliates

hmv.com does redirect to Amazon.ca page - but HMV has its own web site in the UK - hmv.co.uk Secretlondon 14:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Site features

Might be worth adding user-created lists as an interesting form of community interaction - this goes beyond rating and reviewing the products. --Contento 17:14, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Customer service phone number

As of January 2006, every help page on Amazon.com has a button that initiates a call from Amazon's customer service back to the customer. This represents a reversal of the earlier policy to not provide easy access to the customer service number.

This new feature is mentioned in the article, but in light of the fact that this feature is now available, perhaps the section about this "controversy" should be toned down or removed entirely. Would you agree, and does anyone want to take a shot at it? --Chipmunk 08:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's bad customer service in the first place not to have the number listed. However, the few times I've needed customer service, the line attendants were friendly and prompt. --ScaredCrow 00:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This section seems very NPOV. 130.126.210.122 07:13, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article removed from Wikipedia:Good articles

This article was formerly listed as a good article, but was removed from the listing because some of the writing is in need of work; for example the word 'over' occurs 10 times in one sentence, and there are some one sentence paragraphs such as 'Amazon added a wiki feature to their product database' - when? Why? Significance needs explaining. Also I think the information in the trivia section should be in the main flow of the article rather than bullet pointed at the end. Worldtraveller 00:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Amazon S3

I found mention of Amazon S3 at TechCrunch: Amazon: Grid Storage Web Service Launches. I'm not sure yet how to start it, but if anybody else wants to start it and work it in to Amazon.com, here's a link: Amazon S3. --Christopherlin 21:36, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki feature

From the article: "In November 2005, Amazon added a wiki feature to their product database, allowing any customer who had purchased at least one item from the company to edit a section of each product page. In early March 2006, the company removed the wiki feature, replacing it with a more conventional discussion board."

The wiki feature may or may not be back... I saw wiki links on stuff there today. No idea how to source that though, as personal observation is not verifiable. ++Lar: t/c 22:31, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

the NYT article added by user:Felisberto is a good ref. The rest of the refs in the article needs converting to the cite.php style though... right now theyre not linked ++Lar: t/c 18:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I got them. See what you think! But there were only 4 to convert. The article needs more, I think. ++Lar: t/c 19:12, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tel. number

We currently have two sections on Amazon's lack of telephone numbers. Pcb21 Pete 15:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cumulative Customer Accounts

I would like to know what Amazon.com's cumulative customer account quantity. I have found it as about 1.5 million in 1999, and 20 million in 2001 and 35 million in 2003, but that's the last number I have found on the web. Even on documents dated as 2006 they still list 35 million cumulative customer accounts. Has their ccustomer base stopped growing? Also, I'm curious about their active customer base. It would be very interesting to have some idea of how many people have remained active buyers on Amazon and how many accounts haven't been used in, say the last two years.

David Risher?

Should we say anything about the david risher easter egg? If not, here it is.

1. Go to the "Directory Of All Stores" page.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
3. Underneath the copyright date, paticularly under the "95" in "1995-2006", there is a small clickable area. You may have to use tab.
4. Click it. There is a "perpetual" easter egg, dedicated to someone named "David Risher". It's in all it's glory!

This was brought to you by www.eeggs.com. --HomfrogHomfrog^{Tell me a story!}_{Contribulations}Homfrog 22:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anyways, I'll give you a link. Easter Egg with David Risher --HomfrogHomfrog^{Tell me a story!}_{Contribulations}Homfrog 21:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wonder if pages like this will be part of the Gurupa migration... --207.171.180.101 21:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

>> The 'Dave Risher' page continues to be available, post deprecation of Obidos (8 April 2007)

Fulfillment centre in Cork?

I know that recently a fulfillment centre for amazon.co.uk was added in Ireland, but I'm not so sure its Cork. I realise the new call centre is in Cork, but I believe the new fulfillment centre is in Dublin. The reason I think so, is that I have ordered a few things off amazon.co.uk recently, which had the "Postage Paid" thing with a Dublin mark (an indication it was delivered to a post office in Dublin by amazon). Also, on ones which bear the Dublin postage paid mark, it also has the return address if undelivered, as:

If undelivered please return to:
Amazon
PO Box 10361
Dublin 17

Could someone verify where it is? - ^Рэд _хот 21:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is a customer service centre in cork but no Warehouse in Dublin, all the warehouses they have are in Scotland or the main one in Marston Gate!

Amazon has an operations and sw dev center in dublin, but no fulfillment center.

Merging Statistically Improbable Phrases

Bad idea. SIP seems to be an invention seperate from amazon.com. The may be future use of the same concept by different people. Either way, it's distinct from amazon.com, in that they are seperate things. --CalPaterson 14:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

decline -- per cal MPS 01:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion of product lines and site features

This section is a complete mess. Would anyone be against bolding the various terms in each "paragraph" to sort of give the reader a cue of what each grouping of sentences is for? For example,

Amazon Prime is a $79 per year service that allows you to get free two day shipping and upgraded overnight shipping for $3.99 on all eligible items.

In January 2006, Amazon established a partnership with travel meta-search company SideStep and used its service to power searches in Amazon's travel store.

could be

Amazon Prime is a $79 per year service that allows you to get free two day shipping and upgraded overnight shipping for $3.99 on all eligible items.

In January 2006, Amazon established a partnership with travel meta-search company SideStep and used its service to power searches in Amazon's travel store.

Just a thought... -- BrandonR 00:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes please! It's utterly unreadable as-is. Sorely needs some cohesive organisation. LeSaint 19:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Customer Service in India

To whomever is deleting the reference to a call center opened in India servicing North American customer, please stop. This is a widely known and publicized fact (ComputerWorld, India Times). All you have to do is call their 800 # and you'll hear someone with a thick Indian accent. Continuing deletion of this fact would only lead me to suspect that there is POV censorship going on.

Obadiah Shoher vs. Amazon.com

Dear Amazon.com watchers -

Please share your views about Obadiah Shoher. I slaughtered that recently created article with maintenance templates in hope that it will be found important. As an "Israeli politician" he is definitely non-notable, but maybe he is a notable footnote in the history of Amazon.com. If it's non-notable, i'm nominating it for deletion.

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni 08:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

--Not clear what this has to do with anything. Is there something relevant here?

Amazon's bias or just spam?

I've seen ironically biased rhetoric across a few forums alleging Amazon.com bias and censorship. Aside from the use of language, are any of the claims true or is it just spam? I'm not dismissing this without review because increasingly I've seen large companies have institute leftist or rightist POV policies, be they subtle or not so subtle. Just checking if anyone knows if its got a shred of truth, if so it can be mentioned under controversy, if not then its obviously just a scummy libel. Here's a copy-paste with most of the heated POV cut out.

"On July 4, Amazon spammed its customers with advertisement of Norman Finkelstein's virulently anti-Semitic book, Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict. On May 30, Amazon similarly advertised Beyond Chutzpah: on the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. I have never received any other ad from Amazon.
On April 4, in an unprecedented move, Amazon deleted all reviews of Obadiah Shoher's Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict. A few days later, Amazon forced its subsidiary Booksurge to terminate publishing contract with Shoher whose book is now available for download from a place that won't be linked. Google earlier banned advertising of the Samson Blinded for "unacceptable content."

Maybe I found potential in these randomly discovered forum posts because my latest Amazon order hasn't arrived in over a year. Oops, sorry for POV :) --Exander 06:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV

The customer service section really needs some work. If we're going to be so critical we at least need references rather than what is (presumably) the opinion of an editor or editors.--John24601 13:07, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Purchase to review requirement

The article's lacking Amazon's new policy that users must have made at least one purchase from amazon in order to be able to review any item on the site. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.87.64.214 (talk) 09:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

NPOV

I chopped out a lot of biased sections about how "Amazon does not explain why it does not market hate-speech books towards other religions", "Amazon has joined the ranks of major web companies through phishing", and other stuff. It still needs cleaning up, but I removed the most obviously offending things. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.177.59.95 (talk) 18:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Is the area under labor relations neutral? I mean to show only criticisms of Amazon's anti-unionism? It's not universally accepted that unions are good, and I suppose it is factual to say there has been criticism, but then to cite specifics without any counterbalance seems biased.--12.28.101.34 19:40, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cookies used to increase prices

Or rather no-cookies used to decrease prices. Remember that discussion about Amazon increasing prices to loyal customers? Are they still using this method? We need a section on this thing in the article. Someone knows anything about it?

>> Amazon does not increase price for loyal customers. Amazon maintains a one-price per-product per-market (US, FR, DE, UK, CA, JP).

Shopbop

Amazon does own Shopbop: see [1]. This is significant even though Shopbop doesn't have its own Wikipedia node yet, since Shopbop is a fashion boutique and at the time of acquisition, Amazon didn't have any boutique stores (it now does, in Endless.com). White 720 02:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

History / launch history spin-off?

The "new product lines" section is getting really big relative to the rest of the article. How about a History of Amazon.com spin-off page to collect all significant information? White 720 02:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Amazon Kindle E-Book Reader?

Should we add something about this?

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4121

BTW, there is talk it may cost $50. Jaimeastorga2000 18:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page Title

I don't think this page should be called amazon.com because it deals with all of Amazon's sites not just the American one.