I never bought an ebook from Amazon, but I bought at least a dozen Audible audiobooks. Putting aside DRM, not-really-your-audiobook stuff the experience was very good. And I am living in a second world country (Poland). The entire process is just finding an audiobook, clicking pay (with my debit card) and a few minutes later I have the book downloaded to the app and I can start listening.
The only issue that I had with Audible is when I wanted to buy an audiobook in German (for language learning purposes). I bought the book via amazon.de and whoa the book does not show up in my audible because I was logged there using amazon.pl account. After logging to amazon.de account in Audible the book showed up. Now I remember to buy foreign audiobooks always using the same amazon site.
The process is as frictionless as downloading warez from a side like library genesis.
Most local providers in my country have more or less sh_tty systems, where you pay and a few hours later you get an email (sic!) with an audiobook as an attachment (usually you get both epub and mobi). They use a few watermarks techniques to identify your copy - so I am actually scared to share my ebooks with anyone. This year I simply had enough, since I moved to a bigger place I had more place for paper books so I switched to them again. I underestimated how quickly the volume needed by books will grow but I found it refreshing to ditch kindle for a year and be back to paper. Now about 70% of my original book storage is taken, maybe it's time to share my books with my friends?
Now my biggest problem when buying books online: often not even table of contents is available. I can use sites like goodreads to predict if I would like the book, but c'mon table of contents should be considered a must have for online book shops. I also noticed that Amazon book preview is deteriorating, now there is a lot of books when you can't even see a single page, only the cover. This is sad, maybe it's a sign that there is space for Amazon competitor?
I don't use Bing, but I use Yandex from time to time. It's not that bad (not counting being hosted in quasi-democratic country). If Google stopped working one day I would switch to Yandex without much regret.
Bing for me became a meme, a search engine that nobody wants to use but that is nevertheless pushed down your throat by Microsoft (just like IE a few years ago). I tried to use Bing a few times, one thing that I find absolutely annoying are the pictures - every day a new image - I find it very distracting. I am not going to search engine website to watch pictures. I have the same feelings about Doodles, the last one (Olimpic games) really got on my nerves. Maybe there should be a two versions of Google - one for casual browsing and one for actually doing work.
As EU citizen I am really ashamed of EU inability to do big tech. Europe should have its own search engine. US, Russia and China seem superior in that regard. Search engine is no longer a simple indexing app, now it can be used to shape worldviews and do propaganda. Still I do not believe EU can do anything in this regard...
The only issue that I had with Audible is when I wanted to buy an audiobook in German (for language learning purposes). I bought the book via amazon.de and whoa the book does not show up in my audible because I was logged there using amazon.pl account. After logging to amazon.de account in Audible the book showed up. Now I remember to buy foreign audiobooks always using the same amazon site.
The process is as frictionless as downloading warez from a side like library genesis.
Most local providers in my country have more or less sh_tty systems, where you pay and a few hours later you get an email (sic!) with an audiobook as an attachment (usually you get both epub and mobi). They use a few watermarks techniques to identify your copy - so I am actually scared to share my ebooks with anyone. This year I simply had enough, since I moved to a bigger place I had more place for paper books so I switched to them again. I underestimated how quickly the volume needed by books will grow but I found it refreshing to ditch kindle for a year and be back to paper. Now about 70% of my original book storage is taken, maybe it's time to share my books with my friends?
Now my biggest problem when buying books online: often not even table of contents is available. I can use sites like goodreads to predict if I would like the book, but c'mon table of contents should be considered a must have for online book shops. I also noticed that Amazon book preview is deteriorating, now there is a lot of books when you can't even see a single page, only the cover. This is sad, maybe it's a sign that there is space for Amazon competitor?