Amazon is obviously going beyond an “accessible” catalog with their service. You can actually purchase something as well.

Of course where they’re headed is bar code scanning. Example: You’re in a retail book store and don’t want to pay full price. You scan the book’s bar code with your phone’s camera, and Amazon gives you their price for comparison.

Japan is way ahead of America on this. Some stores ban the use of camera phones to keep you from comparison shopping online.