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Amazon's Kindle Fire is a Catch-22 for retailers: The $199 tablet computer could both help Christmas traffic and hurt future sales.

After months of speculation, it's here: Amazon's tablet, the $199 Kindle Fire, was unveiled Wednesday. Smaller and cheaper than Apple's dominant iPad, the Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display and runs on a heavily customized version of Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android operating system. The tablet offers Wi-Fi connectivity, but no 3G or other cellular connection. It also lacks a camera and microphone, two features found in most rival tablets.

Amazon.com Inc is in talks with book publishers about launching a media library service similar to Netflix Inc for tablets and other digital books, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Lawmakers on Friday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a compromise bill that delays California's effort to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect the state's sales taxes while retailers lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes. The state Assembly approved AB155 on a bipartisan, 59-8 vote in the final hours of this year's legislative session. The bill had passed the Senate, 36-1, hours earlier.

Amazon.com is testing a major redesign of its website, an overhaul that could refashion the way people shop on the world's largest online retailer.

Amazon.com Inc has proposed a hiring spree of 7,000 jobs in California if state leaders put a recently enacted online sales tax on hold for two years.

A coalition of giant, brick-and-mortar retailers and their legislative allies have come up with a new strategy to try to head off Amazon.com's referendum to overturn the state's new Internet sales tax law.

Amazon moved aggressively to fulfill its new ambition to publish books as well as sell them, announcing that it had signed Timothy Ferriss, the popular self-help guru.

The online retailer wants voters to strike down the California law requiring the company to collect sales taxes. Wal-Mart, labor groups and other opponents could wage a costly, noisy battle against such a referendum. Escalating its fight to thwart a new levy on Internet purchases, Amazon.com says it will ask California voters to overturn a state law requiring all companies with operations or affiliates here to collect sales tax.

The team behind Diapers.com has made a new e-commerce site aimed at the other baby in the American household: the family pet. Quidsi, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, is announcing Wednesday the launch of Wag.com, an e-commerce site selling pet-related products.