When you've garnered a net worth of $7 billion, a 12-million-strong customer base and the success story of the '90s, you'd think you could afford to act mean to the other guy once in a while. Not Jeff Bezos. Rather than leaning Gates-like on his competitors, Amazon.com's entrepreneur extraordinaire last week issued them all invites to his party.
For one thing, you can now set up your own little e-commerce homestead on a corner of Amazon real estate called zShops. But much more important, Amazon's main search tool--that little text box in the upper-left-hand corner of the home...