Amazon has snatched up independent bookseller AbeBooks, the companies announced this morning.
Amazon says it will leave AbeBooks as a separate, standalone operation and will not combine any of its web sites. AbeBooks sells largely used and out-of-print books from individual shops across the globe. The company had previously held a reseller agreement with […]

Amazon’s S3 storage solution crashed earlier today, causing widespread issues with a range of web 2.0 applications. The service is popular among startups due to its cheap pricing and usual reliability.
Allen Stern broke the news on Centernetworks, noting that the service went down at around midday US EDT. His latest update indicates (per the screenshot […]

Kindle is getting a solid grade when it comes to academic use. The Amazon-run electronic book reading device has been picked up by Princeton University for use in the fall, according to Inside Higher Ed. The school will give students the option of buying several hundred textbooks in a Kindle edition rather than […]

Amazon has acquired fabric specialist Fabric.com. Fabric.com sells measured and cut-to-order fabrics, patterns, and other sewing tools.
The company indicated it’ll offer the services to current Amazon customers, but also said Fabric.com will continue to run as its own stand-alone operation. The Fabric.com offices will remain in Marietta, Georgia.
Amazon isn’t saying how much it […]

Amazon.com has announced two new MP3 promotions, “Daily Deals” and “Friday Five,” offering customers deep discounts on select newly released and catalog albums.
“Daily Deals” is updated daily and offers a popular album at a significantly discounted price, while “Friday Five” offers five albums for $5 every Friday and through the weekend. In celebration […]

A new health-centric social network wants to let you evaluate a medical procedure before you ever walk into a doctor’s office.
Trusera, just launched today, lets users share specific healthcare experiences for others’ benefits. The site also features member endorsements to give more weight to beneficial posts. The service centers around the theme of […]

Amazon is struggling with more problems, just days after its hours-long outage last week.
A California-based web monitoring company discovered the site experiencing issues for at least an hour yesterday, with connection rates as low as 30 percent in parts of the afternoon and large delays when connections could be established.
An Amazon spokesperson only said the […]

The Amazon owned web statistics service Alexa hasn’t been updated for 8 days with no comment from the company. The last date Alexa is showing (at the time of writing) is May 19, with the service usually being two days behind the current date.
I’ve tried contacting Alexa via contact form, email and phone without success, […]

US book giant Borders has returned to online book retailing today after a 7 year absence.
According to an AP report, the new Borders online initiative will be focused on a “Web site designed to evoke the feeling of browsing at a neighborhood bookstore, down to the popular shelves of staff picks that are familiar […]

A fierce debate’s brewing over where internet-based companies should owe taxes, and Amazon is at the center of the fire.
The net retailer is being investigated in Texas because even though its headquarters are in Seattle, it operates a distribution center in the city of Irving.
The whole thing comes down to a 1992 Supreme Court ruling […]

Amazon has filed a lawsuit looking to overturn New York State’s recently enacted law that would have forced the ecommerce giant to collect New York state taxes.
The law was approved last week as part of New York’s $122 billion state budget and is expected to raise around $50 million a year.
State sales taxes aren’t new, […]