Two days after Barnes and Noble announced a similarly priced but better featured Nook e-ink reader, Amazon gifts customers with an unannounced $20 rebate for the Kindle. Amazon is calling it a “consolidation.” The rebate, according to them, was due to the popularity of the Amazon Kindle (doesn’t it go the other way around? Popularity getting the price up?). We’ve reproduced the complete email from Amazon bellow. This announcement also coincides for the devolution of the U.S.-only version of the Kindle. Suddenly it doesn’t exist anymore.

Hello,

Good news! Due to strong customer demand for our newest Kindle with U.S. and international wireless, we are consolidating our family of 6″ Kindles. As part of this consolidation, we are lowering the price of the Kindle you just purchased from $279 down to $259. You don’t need to do anything to get the lower price–we are automatically issuing you a $20 refund. This refund should be processed in the next few days and will appear as a credit on your next billing statement.

We’ll also send you a follow-up e-mail to confirm the refund once it has been completed.

We hope you enjoy your new Kindle. Please send us your feedback at: Kindle-feedback@amazon.com

Sincerely,

The Kindle Team

On a related news, web browsing is now possible, albeit very very limited, in the Amazon Kindle [reference]. Will this pave the way for full Internet connectivity in future Amazon e-Readers?

[via engadget]