Amazon to buy Audible

Ok, I should really be working but I wanted to mention this tidbit which I found to be pretty interesting. Amazon has said it is buying Audible, a pretty big downloadable audiobook retailer. I wonder how this will impact on Apple both in the greater scheme of things and also because I believe there is an Audible presence in the Apple iTunes Store.

I buy my audiobooks from Audible directly and load them into iTunes for transfer to my iPod. I don’t see Amazon disabling support for iPods in Audible but I wonder how this acquisition will play out. Amazon is going head to head with Apple for market share in the music download biz through Amazon MP3 which is also due to open up internationally later this year.

Clearly Amazon is intent on gunning for Apple in the consumer media space and if the Amazon MP3 service becomes available here in South Africa, legitimately, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over a decision to use that service for my music, especially considering that Apple doesn’t deem us South Africans worthy of the iTunes Store. This deal reminds me of that video that did the rounds a little while ago about the future of the Web and how Google eventually takes over the world as the primary source of all information and knowledge (anyone know where the video is? I can’t find the silly thing). At one point in the video there is talk about Google buying Amazon to form Googlezon … although there is a close tie between Google and Apple so could there perhaps be a three way one day?

Now I am tempted to go buy an audiobook …

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