Linked List: August 7, 2014

Thursday, 7 August 2014

‘Google and Barnes & Noble Unite to Take on Amazon’ ★

Alexandra Alter, reporting for the NYT:

Google and Barnes & Noble are joining forces to tackle their mutual rival Amazon, zeroing in on a service that Amazon has long dominated: the fast, cheap delivery of books.

Starting on Thursday, book buyers in Manhattan, West Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area will be able to get same-day deliveries from local Barnes & Noble stores through Google Shopping Express, Google’s fledgling online shopping and delivery service.

I can see why Barnes & Noble agreed to this — they need to compete with Amazon and need help. But my gut feeling is that this too will end badly for them.

Netflix Passes HBO in Subscriber Revenue ★

Reed Hastings, posting on Facebook:

Minor milestone: last quarter we passed HBO is subscriber revenue ($1.146B vs $1.141B). They still kick our ass in profits and Emmy’s, but we are making progress. HBO rocks, and we are honored to be in the same league. (Yes, I loved Silicon Valley and yes it hit a little close to home.)

Short, sweet, and honest.

Computerworld: ‘Microsoft Has Lost About $1.7 Billion on Surface So Far’ ★

This is another reason why those iSuppli-type “it costs Apple/Microsoft/Amazon XXX dollars to make each tablet” estimates are so useless — there are a slew of expenditures related to any product that can’t be captured by “the display costs this much, the graphics chip costs this much, the camera costs this much…”.