[tomw1808]

I think the more than competitive offer of amazon is not really surprising, thinking that they always reduce their own margin significantly to offer such awesome products. Well done, well done!

What I am wondering though is, why they post a picture instead of text on the website - not only for SEO. It results in everyday problems: eg I can't copy and paste the text and post it into skype to inform my dad about that. Yeah, sure, I could post the link, but this is what I consider as a really bad practice. Compare the beautifully crafted privacy statement of apple, even the text in the charts is "text". Just my 2 cents...

[dlgeek]

I've heard a rumor that it's a directive straight from Jeff Bezos because he wants reporters to have to actually write their own articles rather than copying and pasting.

No idea how accurate that is...

[arrrg]

That would be a hilarious reversal of how PR is usually approached: the goal of everything you do is to make it easy for reporters to write about you, in the best case by giving them a text they can just copy, paste and publish with as few changes as possible.

To this end press releases are specifically written and structured like news articles. They are (supposed to be) published in a format that’s easy to copy.

It’s a favorite PR tactic because it works, even without any bribes or coercion. Newsrooms have been shrinking, money has been tight, reporters have less and less time, so if they get something they could as well publish it’s very easy to sway them, especially if it’s just boring news.

However, this is also a weird way to treat respectable journalists who would take the time to write about this. One common sense PR approach is to treat the press nicely, so annoying them by not allowing them to copy something (which might be perfectly legitimate, even when writing your own in-depth article about something) is just weird.

Also, look at this press release: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-ne...

All perfectly copyable. So I’m really not sure whether what you heard is actually true.

[r00fus]

If that's the case - then why does the alt-text show the text [1]? Kind of defeats the purpose theorized in the rumor...

[1] yes, it's for section 508 compliance, I know

[Crito]

I'd kind of be a dick move to screw over people who can't read the images (people who use screen readers for instance), so the alt-text allows that. But what reporter knows how to copy it?

[Stratoscope]

Reporters can't copy alt text.