Amazon is one of the most famous web brands, and one that I frequently use as an example of an established company that could easily be defined as being an early proponent of what is now known as Web 2.0. It also owns the Alexa service which provides web usage stats based on the browsing history of those who have downloaded it’s Alexa toolbar (I’ve already talked about my thoughts on the usefulness of Alexa data elsewhere).

Where these two facts meets, is with the news that Amazon is apparently trying to sue Alexaholic, a site which provides easy access to the traffic graphs which Alexa provides. Alexaholic is a bit of a favourite with many in the online world, as an early example of the mash-up style of site which mix and match features & services from various sources.

So when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was asked by Tim O’Reilly at the end of a Q&A session why they were suing Alexaholic (which had already changed it’s name to Statsaholic to prevent litigation) in front of a room full of Web 2.0 developers, you can imagine that the atmosphere turned pretty frosty, pretty quickly. To cut a long story short, Bezos really had nothing to say.

What this all shows is that even supposedly forward looking web companies can be guilty of not ‘understanding’ the nature of the Web 2.0 world, and the positives that a professional relationship with mash-up sites like these could bring.

I’m not suggesting that intellectual property & trademark issues aren’t important, merely that companies like Amazon should be able to see the benefits of being part of the online community that Web 2.0 allows, and work out how to make a buck out of it.

As it is, they’ve risked ruining their image with the all important online reputation makers - who can very suddenly become reputation destroyers!

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