As of July 1, Amazon.com runs their own baby and toy sites, rather than partnering with Babies R Us and Toys R Us. Though the move was apparently not entirely voluntary -- a lawsuit and a court decision and a July 1 deadline were involved -- Amazon.com's spokespeople were upbeat:

"We are very excited about it," said Patty Smith, Amazon spokeswoman. "We offer two times the selection of what our former partner was able to offer."

Amazon.com sells a lot of stuff. They're mostly known for books, but they also sell shoes, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, etc. Everything, basically. They sell toys in addition to everything and who better to partner with when you're selling toys than Toys R Us? Toys R Us doesn't want to play with Amazon anymore, though. They want to pick up their, uh, toys and go play at their own online storefront. Way back in 2000 Toys R Us's website sucked and Amazon had yet to turn a profit. An exclusive deal between the two seemed like a good idea and it came to be, but things have gone better for Amazon than for Toys R Us since then as the Wal Marts of the world continuously slice at Toys R Us's market. Other toy retailers have even made inroads into selling through Amazon and preventing that was the whole point of the partnership in the first place according to Toys R Us. They started suing each other in 2004 over various breeches of the agreement between the two. more ›