[Spooky23]

I think this reveals Amazon's key weakness -- they don't make any money.

Amazon's big cachet was always "Earth's biggest selection". If they are going to behave like cable companies and refuse to sell books from major customers, they are really failing their customers.

If I want to buy a book, I shouldn't need to know or care about who publishes it, and whether or not they are in a pissing match with Amazon. The first time I run into that situation will be the last time I use Amazon.

[bd_at_rivenhill]

They make plenty of money, but that is then invested back into expanding the business, so it's more accurate to say that they don't make much profit at this time.

[kenrikm]

If that were true they would not be slowly making the service worse to try to eek out some money. "Add On Items" Removing items from being next day eligible with Prime etc.. As someone who orders from Amazon all the time (daily) I have seen a drastic downgrade in the service from what it used to be. Feels more like Walmart then Amazon these days.

[smackfu]

Well, Prime itself probably loses money. It's a pretty classic loss-leader.

[mcguire]

I haven't looked at Amazon's numbers, so I don't know the actual values involved, but "profit" includes money that is then "invested back into expanding the business".