For one, they can afford it. Two, it factors into my decision on the value of Prime to me as a consumer. Prime also offers me the ability to sub to a twitch steamer for free every week. That puts real money in creators pockets. YouTube Premium gives creators more cash when I visit than a free user. I enjoy using services that allow me to give back to creators.

I'm not talking about Amazon Smile specifically. I'm saying that if this is how people react every time a charitable program is closed/modified, then companies have less of an incentive to have these kinds of charities in the first place.

A company is essentially having to make a permanent, immutable financial commitment lest they face backlash.

Yes, Amazon has the money to continue this program. Yes, I think they should keep it around. No, I don't think it makes sense for people to go bonkers over it ending.

They seem pretty committed to pursuing profit forever. I would simply make it a part of my mission and have the integrity to stick to it.

Every company, even the "good" ones, are committed to pursuing profit, at least to some extent. That's the _entire_ point of a company.

Have you ever heard of nonprofits?

By starting a program and saying "for the next x amount of time, this is what we're doing".

That's not a bad idea. I wonder if companies do this today.

I expect cynical HN commenters would make the similarly snarky comments about how X company is only committing to Y time period.

Yeah, they would.

But if Amazon committed to Smile for 2 years, then they could say "We're re-upping our commitment for 2 more years" every 2 years, bringing even more PR for it. And when it ended, there would still be some outrage, but probably not as much.

Most people only "give" when the bells ring outside the stores their buying gifts for others, so they're already used to "giving" during a window.