Pearson Launches New Incubator Company for Startup Companies (Good e-Reader)
Amazon’s Price Parity Clause Attracts Attention of German Antitrust Regulator (GigaOM)
Audible Users Get an iPad App (Galley Cat)
Random-Penguin & Libraries (Digital Book World)
Kindle Daily Deals: The Cider House Rules by John Irving (and 3 others)
Earlier, I’d hoped that the UK would be clever enough to refuse to let Amazon buy out The Book Depository, one of their leading competitors in international book sales. I was disappointed. Yet another example, I told myself, of just how badly the UK is now governed.
That said, Europe, in this case Germany, is probably still our best hope for seeing Amazon’s heavy-handed, monopolist tendencies reigned in. Europeans tend to resent American invasions and they value their own cultures, including books. If Amazon execs were wiser, they’d scale back creating a global empire. Walmart seems to know to keep a lowered profile overseas.
Here, Obama administration is not only did nothing about Amazon’s all-too-obvious, sell-below-cost-to-destroy-competitors scheme of a few years back, they compliantly carried water for Amazon. Instead of taking on Amazon, they went after Apple and the publishers who were trying to ensure a healthy competitive market. Agency pricing is not only legal, Amazon’s entire third-party vendor model is built around it.
Oh how I loath both these Chicago politicians and a lapdog press that refuses to take them on. Do they really think that a president who has spent almost all his political life as a comfortable participant in Chicago’s machine politics isn’t a Chicago machine politician? Even I find that amazing.