Amazon's "Look Inside"

[adelphia]

Can someone explain, why only amazon uses such thing as look inside the book and read some pages? Does amazon have a patent on this?

I can not say for sure but it could just be that Amazon could be the only company who has bothered to look at doing this. As i am sure there would be some kind of authorization needed from the publisher.

Google is actually doing somthing similar as well apparently have a look here http://print.google.com/. They say that it will appear in some search results where a part of a book is relevant to the results.

[adelphia]

I'm not from USA, but as far as i know "Barnes and noble" is the bigest book retailer in bricks and mortar world. They compete with amazon on the internet almost from the begining and B&N do not have this service.

Could they think this is a waste of time?

From what i have read and looked at Barnes and Noble even though a direct competitor to Amazon hasnt been able to match Amazon Online. When you stop and consider the differences between the two companies it makes a lot of sense for Amazon to offer this kind of service. You may ask why.

Well Barnes and Noble have bricks and mortar stores as you say this allows customers to come in and look at a book, and see what is inside. Where as Amazon cannot offer this same experience any other way then allowing people to look inside on there website. I could imagine Amazon would lose at least a portion of there business if they didnt have this feature because even though people like to not have to get up and go out to buy somthing many people would just because they want to see what the book is like on the inside.

Based on my assumptions Amazon is really the only one that this type of service would be of much use to expand customer base. EG when you go online where is the first place you look for a book, espeically in the US you are going to go to Amazon, Maybe even in Lithuania you would go to amazon. It is based on the idea that Barnes and Noble is a Bookstore, and Amazon is a Internet Book Store. Although they have been competing online since near the beginning they dont really compete at the same level, amazon would have a definate online advantage.