The web is on fire this afternoon with the news that Amazon is buying Zappos. The deal is reportedly worth more than $800 million in cash and stock. From the Zappos perspective, the deal makes a lot of sense, at least in the short term. I expect the recession has been hard on Zappos, and things probably haven't been comfortable there since before their layoffs last November. The backing of a behemoth like Amazon would certainly be welcomed. And as long as they are allowed to operate as an independent entity (which will certainly change at some point), the day-to-day impact should be reasonable.