I feel in general there are some things getting muddled together that probably shouldn't. First, you have free services that are using various forms of the wal

I feel in general there are some things getting muddled together that probably shouldn't. First, you have free services that are using various forms of the walled garden model to generate revenue. That's hardly surprising, new, and really anything worth complaining about. If you don't like it, go use that highly successful paid service that doesn't have the ad revenue. Oh wait... Then there is the thread about bundling all of Amazon's services through Prime. Prime is clearly a play to leverage all of Amazon's services in to one big compelling service. Since Amazon still provides their services at competitive rates without Prime, I'm not sure how anyone can gripe about this. Finally, there is the issue of Prime's price going up. I don't think it has anything to do with bundling other services, and everything to do with the program a) being successful (and you see this in competitors adopting similar services) and b) suffering from increased costs everywhere else. Guess what? No matter how much software, and the reverse inflation that comes with it, eats the world, the rest of the world still suffers from the usual challenges of increasing costs. In 2005, when Prime was launched, the price of first class mail has increased 32.4%, which is actually more than the 25% increase in Prime. Maybe there is no sinister agenda....