And this is why I try very hard not to report on rumors. Last week I wrote about a rumor that Microsoft was considering buying the Nook Media division.
Well, the rumor was good for Barnes & Noble stock, which spiked up to $22 a share the day the rumor was announced, and then continued up to almost $24 a share later in the week. (Today it’s down to $21.)
However, as with many rumors, this one has now been dispelled (maybe, assuming dispelling the “rumor” isn’t just part of the big plan.) Insider Monkey says they had an email on Friday from a highly placed source inside Microsoft saying,
“I literally just walked out of the meeting today discussing all this Microsoft/NOOK hoopla going on,” the source wrote to us late Friday.
“This deal was nothing more than a rumor. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will not come out and deny or confirm for legal reasons, but the company has no intention of acquiring the NOOK unit. NOOK is closely integrated with Android (hence their recent Google Play feature) and there is no way it could be ported to Windows 8. This was simply something TechCrunch rushed to report with no fact-checking.”
Since Microsoft isn’t publicly commenting, even this may be little more than rumor, but I thought at the time that it was an odd announcement, coming so quickly after the Google Play integration.
Of course, even the source’s comment that “there is no way it could be ported to Windows 8” sounds odd. Of course it could be ported, if Microsoft had the interest in doing so. And TechCrunch had reported that Nook Media would run primarily as apps on third-party devices, which isn’t the same as porting the operating system.
So we have an article squashing a rumor which just raises more questions in my mind. But it sounds like your Nooks may not be going away. And as I said in my last article, even if they did, Google Play integration still makes the HD a pretty darned good tablet. I’ve been happy with mine so far. It hasn’t completely replaced my Nexus 7, but the HD is close to my go-to device now.
