In a post by the Head Lemur in raving lunacy on Amazon's selling machine, I think that he's got it wrong. Who cares if Amazon uses this channel to sell books, in fact having the books as a part of the search result may actually be helpful; there is no requirement to buy anything. I think that Amazon does have an amazing selling machine, and finding other avenues to build revenue is good business.
On the other hand, I don't particularly like the research task pane. Although I have tried it on occasion, I find it gets in the way of good research and is not very helpful at all. I don't think that there is much of a worry that this will reduce productivity since it is a worthless bit of functionality.
Ralph,
My objections are not predicated on yet another annoying bit of 'featuritis' or the position you state that it may enhance research, which in itself presents a false positive, (considering the universe of 'researchers' vs Office users, those who use it just for writing letters), or even considering your assertion that this is a smart business move on the part of Amazon, where I disagree,(how many affiliates does Amazon already have?)
The majority of businesses are not going to tolerate office workers requesting the company credit card to buy books to research comments made by somebody in the company who is just trying to get a letter written.
I don't think that a memo on vacation time requests with hyperlinks to guidebooks on vacations, airlines, management studies on lost productivity, screaming ''buy me now'' is gonna fly.