Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced today that it will soon close its Quidsi unit, which includes the Diapers.com and Soap.com businesses, amid a failure to reach profitability for the sites.

Written by StockNews.com

The Seattle-based company said via a statement:

“We have worked extremely hard for the past seven years to get Quidsi to be profitable, and unfortunately we have not been able to do so. Quidsi has great brand expertise and they will continue to offer selection on Amazon.com; the software development team will focus on building technology for AmazonFresh.”

Amazon bought Quidsi back in 2011 for around $545 million, mostly in cash. As much as it liked Quidsi’s retail businesses, the crown jewel of the buyout was its state-of-the-art software logistics that allowed Quidsi to determine the correct sized boxes to use to ship certain item combinations, for example. Amazon has no doubt leveraged this technology over the years for its own website as well.

Ironically, Amazon.com itself likely played a significant hand in putting Diapers.com and Soap.com out of business. The company has been very aggressive in recent years with its own low-priced branded products — including diapers, baby wipes, and personal hygiene items.

Amazon didn’t say what it planned to do with the Quidsi assets, including the highly valuable web domain names, but one option would be to simply redirect the web traffic to the diaper and soap sections of its own website.

Amazon.com, Inc. shares were trading at $871.66 per share on Wednesday afternoon, up $15.66 (+1.83%). Year-to-date, AMZN has gained 16.24%, versus a 5.39% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

AMZN currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #3 of 43 stocks in the Internet category.