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On Thursday afternoon, social deals site LivingSocial confirmed rumors of an investment from Amazon, announcing a $175 million in funding from the Seattle-based giant.

Amazon has pulled the plug on WikiLeaks, the site that earlier this week began releasing a mammoth collection of confidential U.S. State Department diplomatic cables.

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted," said WikiLeaks around 3 p.m. Eastern time on its Twitter account. "Free speech the land of the free ... fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe."

Amazon is selling a self-published book defending pedophiles, sparking discussions about the retailer's obligation to vet items before they are sold in its online stores.

Rumor of this buyout has been zipping over the web all weekend, but Amazon has finally confirmed: It's acquired Quidsi, the parent company of online retail sites Diapers.com, Soap.com, and BeautyBar.com. The deal is remarkably similar to the one it did last year with Zappos, purveyors of footwear to the Internet-minded.

Netflix’s marketing costs increased 39% to $81 million in the latest quarter from $58.5 million in Q3 2009 [1]. Netflix continues to win new subscribers despite competing with a host of other online and offline video services offered by players like Apple, Amazon, Google, Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Amazon's Kindle is proving popular in China because it allows users to log on to banned websites.

Does the world have room for another App Store? We'll find out soon. Reportedly, Amazon is planning to launch their very own app store for Android-based devices. Amazon already sells eBook content through the Kindle, and while a few games have also emerged for Kindle, having a dedicated app store that would be available...

Amazon.com has reached an agreement to buy the Spanish internet retailer BuyVip for around $96.5 million, a person close to the matter said.

But as you scroll down the list of Kindle offerings, you can't help but notice all of the steamy writing that seems to be targeted at men--an emotionally uncommitted genre which, if not exactly new, is associated with book publishing less commonly than with "Penthouse Forum."

Best Buy will add the Amazon Kindle to its selection of e-book readers.