Nov 08 2010 7:55am EDT

Amazon Making Diaper Play (Portfolio.com)

Amazon.com is getting set to swallow another e-commerce company, this one geared toward parents in search of diaper deals, among other things.

Fortune reports the Seattle e-commerce behemoth has its sights set on Diapers.com parent Quidsi Inc. The magazine is reporting on its web site that Amazon is ready to fork over $540 million for the company, a move that is certainly well within keeping of Amazon’s past history, TechFlash’s Eric Engleman writes.

Amazon bought Zappos.com, the online shoe seller, last year for $1.2 billion.

But the pattern doesn’t stop at buying other e-commerce sites. Amazon tries to compete with them first.

Engleman writes of the Zappos case, and now in the case of diapers:

As Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh recounted in a recent interview with TechFlash, Amazon went out and started a competitor shoe site called Endless.com before eventually acquiring Zappos.

Amazon has definitely been showing an interest in diapers lately. The company just launched its first e-commerce storefront on Facebook for Pampers, and recently started offering a free membership program called Amazon Mom with discounts on diapers.

Amazon’s itch to acquire additional sites coincides with the company’s willingness to put cash behind ventures that could expand its markets beyond traditional e-commerce.

Recently, Amazon became one of the investors in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ sFund, a venture capital play aimed at developing social media-related companies. In that case, Amazon’s aim is to continue to move beyond e-commerce altogether and provide cloud computing services to the new companies that could be spawned by social media.

In any case, it’s clear that Amazon isn’t content to sit still in its dominant e-commerce position.