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@tirsales: Don't forget, the focus of the article is on Amazon, a company that has always operated on the long-term view. Amazon created its present business model by taking its time and tweaking it to death, until almost a decade later, it was operating, and profiting, like a swiss watch. I'm sure they are approaching the Kindle in the same way. And I agree that this is potentially not good, since Amazon is concentrating their efforts on a proprietary format and delivery system.
If publishers can maintain their sovereignty long enough to establish a standardized format (like ePub) that any outlet can sell and any e-book reader can convert, it won't matter what Amazon does. But I don't know that the pubs have the stones to do that, as opposed to rolling over and accepting Amazon's in-place, we-do-all-the-work e-book contracts--which, I'm sure, entice the pubs with the carrot of DRM protection (however illusory) and the lock the pubs into exclusive deals and Kindle formats only.
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