Amazon, Retail | featured news

Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest Internet retailer, said it will sever ties with its affiliates in California if the state enacts a new law that requires the company to collect taxes on online purchases. California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation yesterday mandating sales-tax collections by Web retailers, including Amazon, on purchases by state residents. The state’s pending budget plan counts on $200 million from the law. In an e-mail before the bill was signed, Amazon said the legislation was “unconstitutional and counterproductive.”

Amazon.com Inc reported that first-quarter sales rose 38.2 percent, above analysts' forecasts.

The retailer launched the new service in San Jose, Calif., as it seeks to adapt to competitive threats from Amazon.com and others.

Amazon.com, apart from being a major online retailer of books, DVDs, music, games, apparel, and other merchandise, also has a small business of providing cloud and other Web services. It offers Web services like cloud computing and cloud storage service offerings, in which it competes with bigger players like Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com. Amazon also owns and operates websites such as Audible.com, IMDB.com, and Shelfari.com.

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.

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.

Downloading content is becoming increasingly big business for the online retailer, which already has download offerings for its Kindle eBook, MP3 music and movies.

Experian Hitwise just released its Cyber Monday stats, with Amazon reportedly topping the list as the most visited retail website yesterday, seeing a 44% increase in visits compared to 2008. Amazon received 15.53% of the visits among the top 500 online retail sites.

Hitwise reports that among the top 500 retail websites, the percentage of U.S.

For now, it’s a battle of discounts, but Wal-Mart’s long-term goal appears to be stopping Amazon from taking away its business.