无根之根

Slashdot消息：

Kindle阅读器已经卖完，下一批的Kindle将于12月3号投入市场。本周才新鲜出炉的Kindle受到多方的关注，TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, O'Reilly Radar等知名blogger都有评论。其中以O'Reilly Radar的Peter Brantley写的评论最能引人思考：

亚马逊推出的电子书阅读器是一种明显的monopoly的行为，当然，亚马逊希望人们都到它的网上书店去买书，但是，他似乎没有理由拒绝公共图书馆的参与，因为人们最终还是会作出最佳选择的：

“most importantly, the inability of a large institution to control the distribution pipe, even a secondary one, means that Kindles are going to be a direct-to-consumer device for a while, and the reader will be consuming primarily through Amazon and its partners, not via the Berkeley Public Library. That's a loss to the public, and I think to Amazon as well, which doesn't grok the broader conversation it could be defining.”

当然，亚马逊最大的竞争对手还是Google:

"[...] Google is always the elephant in the room when it comes to digitized books. But if you think about such Google moves as Android and how it will affect mobile access to the web, it doesn't take rocket scientists [...] to conceive of how a more open platform than Amazon's will be available to the market."

说实话，在iPhone上市的时候，我对这一被Steve Jobs誉为"手机的革命“的产品寄予极大的期望。Steve是一个营销天才，他两年以前就看到了手机无限广阔的市场前景，并投入巨额资金用于研发iPhone。当然，iPhone没有辜负人们的期望，只是不知道这一次会否因Kindle的出现而被打得一败涂地，还是会通过拥抱更多的第三方开发者，使之成为一个开放的平台，以立于不败之地？我们还是拭目以待吧。

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Links:

Newsweek对于Kindle所作的详细报道

Kindle在亚马逊网上商城

Kindle能干什么？15 Things I Just Learned about the Amazon Kindle

更多有关Kindle的新闻与评论