Reply to post #203
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Yeah, I thought it was an apt comment. :) Hey, I love Amazon to bits for what it does. It is what it is, and serves its function terrifically well. If it would stick to just that, I would have no complaints. But just like all the other mega-corporations when they get too big, Amazon now tries to take over everything, and rule the world.
Once big corporations become monopolies or near-monopolies, and start getting their greedy fingers into everything, they change from being a positive influence to a cancer, a plague eating at the heart of society. They try to buy up or eliminate all competitors, take over the internet, and negatively influence national and even global law and economies by using their vast financial and economic resources to bribe greedy, corrupt politicians to pass laws favourable to their profit making practices. And they don't care what damage those bad laws do to the fundamental rights and liberties of the rest of us (I'm thinking primarily of censorship, privacy and copyright laws here).
GR started out as an excellent reader resource and community, but when Amazon came along offering megabucks, they sold out. I suppose very few small companies could resist if any big corporation came along offering millions. But the problem is that when they sell out and line their own pockets, they betray their members and stick it to the very people that helped them grow big and successful enough to come to the attention of that big corporation in the first place.
When the innovative new kid on the block is snapped up by one of the big boys, it's usually all downhill from there, as we've seen with GR. I don't know if BookLikes will end up the same way if it gets big and popular enough, as I don't know anything about the guys who run this site. But we definitely need some kind of an open, non-commercial (selling) focused READERS community that the owners won't flog to one of the big guys as soon as they come knocking.
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