Quote:
Originally Posted by chyron8472
Wow. just wow. You'd think Amazon execs had beat you with a stick or something.
. . .
also, regarding the Betamax comparison...
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Anytime you have the unfortunate combination of the largest player in the market also having the sleaziest most anti-competitive business practices, then I think that is worth pointing out.
You mentioned the comparison to the Betamax/VHS and Nintendo/Sega wars.
I agree, Amazon clearly learned something from these . . .
They learned that since electronically marketed content over the Internet does not suffer from the stocking nightmares that plagued retailers of physical tapes and game cartridges, and that since text on the printed page has no natural 'format incompatibility' issues, then they had better dream up some crappy artificial restrictions really quick.
By locking users into effectively ONE artificially created "e-book cartridge" format, and creating players that can only play that "cartridge", they do indeed hope that they can play the same kind of "Big Guy Squashs the Competition" games in this challenging new Internet market, where normally the trend towards interchangeability of formats would not allow this.
Borders is one example of a victim of Amazons strategy. Not having a e-book reader of their own initially, it would have been natural for Borders to tap into the large base of Kindle owners by offering Kindle compatible titles as well as those for Sony or Kobo readers. But they couldn't sell "Kindle Cartrage" compatible books without getting sued by Amazon.
Now Borders is going through bankruptcy. So sad. I'm sure Amazon is heartbroken over that.
Thanks for pointing out this comparison.
Personally, when I saw the games Amazon was playing with the Kindle, it did cause me to take a closer look at ALL their business practices including -
- The "one click shopping" lawsuit which was utter garbage. Who are they kidding? The idea that keeping track of a few cookies to know that someone has already logged in is something so obvious a chimpanzee could come up with it (by way of comparison, fishing out termites with a stick is much LESS obvious).
- When dozens of states pointed out that maybe, just maybe, since Amazon had technically BEEN GUILTY OF VIOLATING THE LAW by not collecting taxes for quite some time, maybe, just perhaps, it might be nice if they would collect those taxes in the future (like B&N, Target.com, and virtually EVERY OTHER NATIONAL ONLINE RETAILER) AMAZON RESPONDED WITH THREATS AND EXTORTION, by threatening to shut down all affiliate Internet businesses in those states.
Amazon's excuse for this reprehensible behavior was that it wasn't really blackmail at all. No it was just that having affiliates who were unquestionably physically doing business in those states was making it so crystal-clear that Amazon was breaking the law that even paid-off conservative pro-business judges probably couldn't rescue them. So by just closing down those affiliates everything would be peachy keen again.
The only problem with this argument is that our legal system isn't golf and doesn't generally give 'mulligans'. If you catch someone picking your pocket, they don't just get to give you back your wallet and call it even.
If I had been California or any of the other states, I would have simply replied, "That's fine Amazon, you do that, you go ahead with your threat to shut down all affiliates in our state, but since you ALREADY BROKE THE LAW
by not collecting these taxes in the past, we are going to fine you, let's just say TEN TIMES THE AMOUNT OF THOSE PAST UNCOLLECTED TAXES. Or roughly speaking A FEW BILLION DOLLARS.
Sorry for drifting more off topic
Thanks for bringing this up though. Since you brought up the subject, I did some more research and realized that Amazon seems to have the business ethics of a pit viper, and I guess I don't like that very much.
Hey, Google, I have a great idea, why don't you BLOCK the use of "Kindle for Android" on all Android devices until Amazon either offers to support EPUB (so Kindles can use content purchased at YOUR Google Books bookstore) or until Amazon at least provides their AZW DRM code freely to you and other book sellers so you can create a conversion app that will safely convert DRM protected EPUBs to DRM protected AZW for use on the Kindle.
I would LOVE to hear Amazon's arguments why it's all wrong for Google to block Amazon content on their devices, but perfectly OK for Amazon to lock out Google Books and everyone else on the Kindle.
