Indeed I wasn't too impressed by amazon's cash intensive business until now. Stefan seems to be a more convinced 'Amazonian'.
However Amazon announced two interesting improvements of their site:

• 1. The possibility to search online through parts of books and make them appear in Google Results. A great plan as Google is the entry for more and more users while browsing the web.
• 2. Amazon plans to open up it's payment system and therefore enabling other retailers to bill through their system.

These ideas seem to be a part of a more general move to leverage the investment in infrastructure Amazon has done. For a while now Amazon operates web shops for other retailers and provides full back end support. This could diversify the huge risk Amazon bears with it's 'everything in-house tactics' .