Editorial - Amazon.com Baffles My Mind

The giant retailer, seemingly the one-stop shopping place for all of your consumer needs (with the exception of groceries) just seems to be boggling my mind more and more by the second. Having never cut a profit since its inception over a year ago, the company continues to operate and lose money, while still attracting investors and retailers to sell through them.

How it is that a company can continually lose massive amounts of money and still be functioning the way Amazon.com does is beyond me at times. To top it all off, the company recently revamped its privacy policy to much dismay from its customers and registered members. The new policy has come under heat since the first day it was posted, and continues to be criticized, making the company look even worse as a whole.

In recent discussions with a friend of mine, Amazon.com and its new policy came to topic. He was telling me how he wrote them for an explanation around the new policy and the way it works, as well as a request to be removed from their system completely, including all personal information. He was promptly written back just the other day only to find out that his request was denied.

As it turns out in the new policy, your personal information is now regarded as an asset, and can be sold to the highest bidder if the company goes under.

Is it just me, or does that seem wrong? What can we as consumers do about these situations? One answer is of course to boycott the use of Amazon.com and no longer shop there. But in the case of my friend, he was already a registered member and now he's forced to comply with the new policy, leaving his personal information hanging in the balance.

The real question here is how much longer will Amazon be around? Some say it will die in coming months, and others disagree. What is your opinion on the matter? Check back soon and the response he received from Amazon will be posted here.