No, Amazon.com is closing it down because they can't make any money off of us. They can from the site they've described.
I was using IMDb last night as it will be used in the future -- as nothing but a reference site. I'd just seen "Watch on the Rhine," and I was trying to place one of the actors that I knew I'd seen before. When I looked at the page, Lo! There it was! A link to Amazon.com, where I could pick up a DVD of it! That's real worth to Amazon!
"Food and Drink" is simply a place where people who are interested in food and drink come to chat. You can't make a dime off of that. Well, you could, but then Col Needham would have to face the fact that IMDb really only exists as a marketing tool for Amazon.com. He still likes to think of it as what he created it for. But if you want to maintain control of it, you don't sell it to Amazon.com, do you?
Of course, they could line the pages with ads. But loads of adverts for Amazon's kitchen/grocery products would make IMDb's true purpose a little too palpable. Then Col couldn't swell around the next time an important celeb died and all the papers ran with IMDb as the only source about their credits and sometimes even their bios.
When evil is viewed as good, righteousness is viewed as evil.
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