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Bezos Denigrates Advertisers As Mysterious Patent Appears

"Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service," Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos remarked at the online retail giant's annual shareholders meeting, held at the Seattle Art Museum. The comment, part of an answer to a question about Amazon's competitors "caused the audience to go silent," writes SeattlePI.com blogger Andrea James.

She discovers an unintentional environmental theme running through the meeting. Bezos' green references included the Kindle potentially leading to less paper use down the road, the recent eliminations of dozens of wire ties and hard plastic encasements from its packaging, the use of hundreds of employees to identify waste and look for more energy-efficient practices, and how it's more efficient to use full delivery trucks to drop off packages via optimized routes than for consumers to drive a 2,000-pound car to buy a five-pound item from a brick-and-mortar store.

Meanwhile, though, another local Seattle outlet, Techflash, reported that Amazon has just been granted a patent "for a building design that looks a lot like a mini-store location." Is Amazon "getting into the brick-and-mortar retail business," asks reporter Eric Engleman in his story that's complete with images from the patent itself.

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