It seems like Amazon stepped into a public relations disaster [1] and the Internet has just exploded [2].
I'm concerned about this, since I make some money off of Amazon [3] and I don't want to think I'm frightening away readers because of my advertising Amazon (although I suspect most of my readers read me via my ATOM [4] or RSS [5] feed, which makes the advertising moot). Oh, I don't make that much money, but I made more money using Amazon than I ever did using Google [6]'s Ad Sense [7] program.
I would like to think that this kerfluffle was an honest mistake on Amazon's part, or perhaps a coordinated attack against Amazon [8] or an interesting hack of the Amazon website [9] (or was it just a hack [10]?).
Heck, it could have been a disgruntled employee for all we know.
Me? I'll follow the “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity [11]” advice for now (even if it was a malicious manoeuvre by Amazon, they're gotten so much flack for this I think they've learned their lesson).
[2] http://www.google.com/search?q=Amazon+fail
[4] https://boston.conman.org/index.atom
[5] https://boston.conman.org/bostondiaries.rss
[7] https://www.google.com/adsense/
[8] http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html
[9] http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html
[10] http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html