Google (GOOG) Offers First Real Challenge To Amazon (AMZN) Kindle
Google (GOOG) is about to release an e-book program which will allow consumers to download content onto PCs and portable electronics devices. It is a direct competitor to Amazon’s (AMZN) e-book reader, the Kindle. The Google product has several advantages. The…
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The Kindle is relatively expensive. with a prices as high as $359. The Google e-book program will work with consumer electronics devices that most people already own.
The Google download store will give publishers a great deal of control over how they price their content. The Kindle download program does not, which makes it somewhat unattractive to publishers already facing falling sales and margins on paper books.
The Kindle looked like it might be the only game in town for publishers who wanted to be in the e-book business. That is not longer true, which means that the Amazon product may not do as much for sales of the e-commerce giant as analysts thought it would.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
