I completely disagree. They run a system that is arguably very complex. I would not want to restyle my entire app (for a day) (so people like you would approve of it). They took something that was low risk, made it happen across the board, reliably. Site still works. It drums up chatter around offices. Makes people visit. Enjoy your misery.

Wow, no need to overreact. I remember VK offered Soviet and Pre-revolutionary versions of their web-site as an easter egg:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_%28social_networking_website...

"Russian-speaking users can choose between the standard Russian version and two extras: a Soviet version and a Pre-Revolutionary version. Other than language tweaks (e.g. telegrams for messages and comrades for friends) these versions contain other easter eggs. For example, all private messages in the Soviet version have a stamp saying 'passed server censorship'. The pre-revolutionary version uses old-style Russian orthography. Both extra versions are also ad-free."

Amazon is naturally much bigger, but VK is not a small fry either.

It wasn't an overreaction, it was merely defending their decision and implementation. It was far from "embarrassing".

Would probably result in millions of lost revenue because of the UI.. Although that number would be interesting to see.

It's probably much higher than we can guess.

Amazon has been pretty conservative with their UI changes over the years, which could be because their users react poorly to them.