Goodbye Woot

I've been a fan of Woot.com for a very long time. But yesterday I got the news that they've been bought out by Amazon. They've gone out of their way to assure people that they're not changing their business model or being changed by Amazon in any way. This is beside the point. The real point is that I hate Amazon.

One of Amazon's major business practices is patenting stuff they didn't invent. The best known of these is their patent on 1-Click ordering. They didn't come up with it. They weren't the first to use it, but they got the patent and started suing other companies that were using it first.

They've also patented customer reviews. And social networking systems. That's right they patented Facebook.

That's just a quick sampling, of course. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, says this behavior is completely immoral and unethical and should be illegal, however, since it's not illegal he's gonna keep doing it.

So I don't do business with Amazon. I use gift cards from Amazon, but only so they don't get to keep the whole thing. I make sure to spend it on companies that sell through Amazon instead of spending on Amazon stuff. And now I can no longer buy from the site that has given me my TV, stereo, coffee pot, several Sony E-readers, wireless routers, Roombas, webcams, mosquito catchers, cheap MP3 players, and a bunch of other stuff.

Goodbye, Woot. It's been nice doing business with you.
Fuck you, Amazon. Fuck you very much