By using Amazon.com Web Services (www.amazon.com/webservices), developers can build applications and tools that will allow them to incorporate many of the unique features of Amazon.com into their Web sites, free of charge.

"We're putting out a welcome mat for developers - this is an important beginning and new direction for us," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. Among its features, Amazon.com's Web Services will allow third party sites to search and display products from Amazon.com's Web site, and enable visitors to those sites to add items to their Amazon.com shopping carts.

"Amazon.com's Web Services harnesses the vast array of product information already available on its Web site and turns it into a resource for developers as well as users," said Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates. "This is a significant leap forward in the next-generation programmable Internet."

Amazon.com Web Services is available free of charge. It's also integrated with the Amazon.com Associates Program (www.amazon.com/associates), which allows Web sites to earn referral fees from purchases made at Amazon.com via links on their Web sites. The combination of Amazon.com Web Services and the Associates Program will allow developers to incorporate more Amazon.com features onto their Web sites, ultimately driving more traffic and more referral fees as a result.