Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorow
Amazon could go "open" any day. They own the Mobipocket format. If they wanted to, they could publish all the specs today. But why would they want to? Currently they are in a market dominating positing. They have the biggest online store selling p-books and e-books, and they have the most successful dedicated e-book reading device that is currently on the (US-) market.
So what about non-US markets? Everything related to e-books is still in infancy. European publishers are trying to tell us that e-books are not important and that people want real paper. Let Sony do all the nasty talk with them. Let Sony do the beginning and allow Amazon to sit and observe. If the situation is right, Amazon can step in, and every publisher will follow them because they are just too big to be ignored.
Just because Amazon Mobipocket isn't open doesn't mean that Amazon cannot benefit from their dominating role as a book seller. Just because Mobipocket isn't open today doesn't mean that it cannot be open tomorrow. Amazon has the luxury to test the market and play all options to their best advantage.
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Mobipocket is an effectively open format, just like LRF. The problem isn't the format, its the Kindle store. That is what Amazon needs to open up, by allowing people to buy ebooks from it for any reader.