From Vox:
Amazon has a pitch for some US-based publishers: Expand overseas. We’ll make it worth your while.
The world’s dominant e-commerce player is in talks with big American publishers, including the New York Times and BuzzFeed, about deals that would reward them for expanding their international presence, specifically in consumer-oriented shopping sites.
Amazon already pays internet publishers that refer shoppers to the company via “affiliate links” embedded on their site, but it thinks that business could grow significantly if US publishers had more readers outside of America.
. . . .
It’s also an indicator that even though Amazon dominates online commerce, it still thinks it needs help getting shoppers inside its giant site. While Amazon is the place shoppers go to find something specific — it is increasingly challenging Google in the search results race as shoppers head directly to Amazon to look up a specific item — affiliate links can drive shoppers to stuff that Amazon is particularly interested in selling or that shoppers may not have known they could get from Amazon.
Link to the rest at Vox
And if you climb into a time machine and go back a bit you’ll find that Microsoft paid to keep Apple going for a bit. 😉