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Microsoft browser analogy: Applicable to Kindle?
July 6, 2009 | 5:34 am
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By David Rothman
Microsoft has tied Internet Explorer close to Windows even though you can install other browsers. Some say this could be why Microsoft is losing the browser wars.
If so, could the same argument apply in time to the Kindle format—linked to particular hardware?
Granted, Amazon has done an iPhone app, but you’re still not getting a full-strength Kindle. For example, you can’t use the iPhone to receive Kindle-distributed newspapers and magazines.
Perhaps the real lesson here is for Amazon beef up the nonKinde-hardware options and also to be less proprietary about formats, just as Jeff Bezos promised it would be.
The real risk, perhaps even more than user frustration, might be a good old fashioned anti-trust action by the U.S. government, at least once the e-book market is more mature.
Related: eReader price drop not affecting Amazon. Some say it’s too early for there to be an effect. But if not, will anti-trust regulars use this as an argument against Amazon in time?
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Comments:
i think it’s a bit inappropriate to forget that they beat netscape and the integration was a big part of it.
ie came up from nothing and beat netscape using the integration.
windows 7 comes out in end October. With IE8 in-built (except in europe).
it’ll be interesting to see what happens then.
People tend to overlook the power of the default. Companies like Google and Microsoft don’t – that’s why they’re paying other companies billions to become the default search engine for their devices (verizon, at&t etc.) and paying $1 per toolbar install.
I don’t think that Amazon is anywhere close to being threatened by an anti-trust suit. If Apple can create an operating system that can only run on the hardware that it sells* and not have been sued into oblivion by now, then Amazon can sell text files that can only be read on the hardware that it sells without worry.
Besides, I think the fact that you can buy a Sony e-reader from Amazon negates any argument that they are stifling competition, at least in the hardware arena.
(* – Please note that I am fully aware that it is possible to run the Mac OS on non-Apple computers, and that several sites will walk you through the process of creating a “Hackintosh.” Try selling one of those computers on the open market, though, and see how long it takes before Apple’s legal department is in touch.)