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I don't see anything in Amazon's terms about what you call "full blown criminal fraud" and I would imagine it is actually encouraged by Amazon. Google is payin

I don't see anything in Amazon's terms about what you call "full blown criminal fraud" and I would imagine it is actually encouraged by Amazon. Google is paying for clicks, whereas Amazon is only paying for actual sales. Amazon would benefit from that message being on every site on the internet. It's advertising for them and letting people know they can help their favorite sites adds an extra incentive to sway people to order stuff.

alanh 16y ago
Agreed, I see many sites even for big charities regularly saying "when you shop Amazon, do so from here." Amazon could stop that in a hurry. They don't.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  The open-source video aggregator Miro actually has a Firefox extension that automatically appends Miro's affiliate code if there wasn't already one on the link you followed to Amazon. This is done pretty obviously so I assume that Amazon is aware of it and allows it. I don't see anything even slightly fraudulent about saying, "Amazon pays us commission on sales made with our affiliate code attached, please buy expensive things there", and I don't see how that's bad for anyone.
notahacker 16y ago
Yep, paying a commission for making sure that an intended purchase is made at your site is better than risking losing it to the price comparison lottery; at worst they make a slightly lower profit per sale. eCommerce vendors are even happy to partner with sites like Quidco that openly offer cashback rewards for people making purchases via their affiliate links.