Amazon Creates Wikipedia-linked Shopping Pages

Amazon.com has quietly begun a project to duplicate Wikipedia content and use links in the content to point to books that can be purchased on Amazon.com. The so-called Shopping-enabled Wikipedia Page was reportedly created in November.

Amazon spokeswoman Anya Waring told CNET the following:

"Shopping-enabled Wikipedia pages are a new introduction on Amazon.com. As of November, we have rolled [the feature] out in the books category; however, [it] will be expanding to new categories in 2011."

That means, of course, that in 2011, other product categories will be linked to the pages, such as electronics, computers, toys, video games, and more.


Wikipedia, always desperate for funds, isn't making anything off the Amazon.com's new pages, however. The Wikipedia content is licensed under Creative Commons, which Wikipedia uses for all of its user-sourced content.

At the very bottom of the page is a section labeled Source, with the message: "The article appearing above is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details."