Over the past 15 years, I've probably spent $15k at Amazon. I love everything about it. The staggering choices that are offered, the Prime shipping model, everything. It's the first place I go when I'm looking for something - anything.
This time, they're wrong. Like any company that becomes too big, they risk losing a little bit of what makes them great. They almost lost me when they removed the ability to call support and talk to a human being (I still hate them for that), and they've continued a quite illogical policy of not allowing me to read stuff I purchased from their own Mobipocket site on my Kindle.
Now, they're responding to Apple's announcement of the iPad with predictable ham-handedness. In my opinion, the Kindle is now dead. The minute I get an iPad, I'll be offering my Kindle for sale to the highest bidder. Thing is, it should never have been about the Kindle for Amazon; it should have been about the content. They're already providing software versions of the Kindle reader - which is awesome because you can read Kindle books anywhere. This is the key people, it's Gilette 101.
Alienating the publishers (and by extension the authors) isn't going to help Amazon. Yanking Macmillan's books from the website smacks of a truculent child and makes me angry. Amazing to see such a technologically sophisticated company make such stupid moves. This is how Sony fucked up in the 80's and 90's. Amazon (and Apple) would take care to remember this.
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