

Amazon buying Audible.com for $300M - justinwhitefoot
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22932318/

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DocSavage
Audible's greatest weakness has been its web infrastructure and search system.
Amazon can easily address those problems and make their platform much more
attractive.

Audible has also experimented with mixing narration onto an e-book experience.
Needless to say, if the deal goes through, Amazon's Kindle will offer a more
integrated audiobook+reading experience so you can read along with a
professional narrator using automatic page turning.

If I remember correctly, Don Katz, the Audible CEO, had spoken to Bezos in the
early days of Audible. Bezos thought a digital audiobook business was a great
idea but a decade too early. Looks like the waiting period is over.

This is great news for Audible the company and not so great news for
shareholders who believed it could do really well independently. A number of
us have been, in the words of one of my ADBL.org members, "addicted customers
and weary shareholders." For a blast from the past, you can read a somewhat
slanted story about us in an old NYTimes article:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/business/yourmoney/23penny...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/business/yourmoney/23penny.html)

There have been some execution issues since that Las Vegas party, but this
acquisition will ensure the company's growth even if it doesn't give much to
shareholders. Would be surprised if Apple gets in a bidding war, so Apple's
reaction will be interesting. Shareholders were hoping for an acquisition with
Amazon five years ago. Then we were thinking Apple would be the more likely
acquirer. I guess it's not surprising that the deal went through now that ADBL
stock price plunged over the last three months.

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DarrenStuart
I wonder what this means for itunes? surely they won't drop the support
because they would lose a lot of cashflow.

