Question for the HN mods (and community): At what point is a post like this not simply an advertisement? This isn't a link to a press release, an article, a blog post, etc. that discusses the project, and this isn't even new (I've been getting snail mail ads for this for a month or two).
Should big companies just start linking directly to things they want us to buy on HN, with no context? Is that encouraged here?
Since this is a community that cares equally about new ventures and technology, a direct pointer to a new venture makes sense. The community is getting introduced to the venture directly and is free to click around to understand more.
Amazon does interesting things with tech and logistics. This is their latest foray and is interesting to this audience/niche. I understand your concern, but if this was just mindless advertising, I would think it would receive short shrift from the down voters and would disappear fairly quickly. As it happens this is pretty interesting zeitgeist news.
I'd prefer links to stories about new ventures, their strategic impact, etc, but given that anything worth discussing usually produces multiple stories it's better that all the discussion occur on a single thread with a link to the announcement.
Should big companies just start linking directly to things they want us to buy on HN, with no context? Is that encouraged here?