On January 23, Amazon secured the domain kindledx.com, anticipating the launch of its new product today, the Kindle DX. Given all the hoopla surrounding today’s event, you’d think Amazon would have thought to point the domain to the Kindle DX pre-order page — or at the very least, to the Kindle page, or even any page whatsoever. Instead, it’s a dead link.
Amazon, which also owns kindle.com, points that domain to the page where you can buy the Kindle. I’m sure Amazon will eventually get around to doing it with its new product, but it may have been wise to do it on a day when the hype and demand are at their peak.
Update: Someone out there is listening. Amazon just set up the site to redirect to its Kindle store page.
Well, most people will go to Amazon.com before they’ll go to Kindledx.com anyway.
It depends on whether Amazon intends to keep it up indefinitely.
If its a one time thing, then its better to own the domain and not do anything with it. Imagine if you have 200 products and 200 domain names, keeping track of it can be quite a hassle. (Sure THIS is Amazon.com, they can do it… but I digress).
If Amazon only wants to turn on the domain for this brief “hype” period, I think it was wise of them not to do it, since it would be indexed and linked to by others, forcing them to forever keep the domain alive.
Just parking it takes away the possibility of domain hucksters getting to it and I think that’s enough. Most people who are interested in the DX will go to Amazon.com directly anyways.
Its the hard for Amazon to just do a redirect from kindledx.com to amazon.com? They are a multi-billion dollar company. You are letting them off too easy
It has already bought
You worried too much
There are more popular sites that can only be visited via http://www.domain.com, but there’s no way to get access via http://domain.com
This is so called STUPID.
Who cares! There must be more interesting stuff to write about…
Slow news day ?
STOP THE PRESSES WHAT A SCOOP
Great piece. It is important to pair domains with relevant content. Just like folks use search, some type names in too.
I don’t think they forgot.
They just don’t want some squatter trying to sell animal pron using their product
It works now.
You use Safari? HA!
Signed.
i don’t understand what this has to do with twitter
!!!!!!
Don’t you mean FriendFeed?
I just twatted all over the place.
Scandelous, good sir! This is a family publication! :O
Better than what Apple did with iPhone.com
People bash, but it really is sad how far behind large companies (ESPECIALLY web companies!) are when it comes to domain names. Direct navigation, which is what this is — typing a product or keyword into the URL bar and adding .com — is a huge industry. The more savvy users will go straight to Amazon.com, but you can be sure Amazon would lose thousands of dollars of sales if they did not point this domain to a place where you can purchase the new Kindle.
It’s more like that they don’t care. You can’t possibly believe that Amazon FORGOT.
Google and Sony Team Up to Fight Amazon’s Dominant Kindle. The Google-Sony deal should be good news for e-book fans. Amazon may be forced to reciprocate. Other readers could become more affordable.
Ooops… I guess they had more important things to do during the launch!
Jon
http://WoodMarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
Just defensively preventing others from grabbing the domains. They probably should have linked it to their main product page, but it’s really not a big deal.
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