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Would Amazon Offer Up Free eBooks With Advertising?

A bunch of folks have sent in a MediaPost story about a recently granted patent and some patent applications by Amazon that suggest the company is at least considering offering free ebooks with contextual advertising mixed in or possibly the ability to get a free ebook with the purchase of a physical book. To be honest, the idea doesn't seem all that surprising -- and ebooks supported by ads is something that's been talked about for ages (after all, once it's digital, it's effectively the same thing as a web page anyway, right?). So I'm a bit confused as to the reason for a patent. The basic process doesn't just seem obvious, but with tons of prior art, unless you suddenly want to pretend that an ebook is somehow different than any other digital file.

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July 8th, 2009

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