The outcome we got is probably in the middle, badness-wise. Better would be an independent Goodreads with incentives to find features that fight spam and such.

The outcome we got is probably in the middle, badness-wise. Better would be an independent Goodreads with incentives to find features that fight spam and such. But it's hard to imagine them being able to make much money doing that, and them going under would be worse. And honestly I'd MUCH rather have a Goodreads that Amazon does nothing with than a Goodreads that chased growth from VC money or PE or whatever to try to turn into another retail site and abandoned the "your reading history" angle.