4 ms·

A consistent problem I've seen with e-books and streaming video is lack of live content, in particular breaking & current news. Apple provides some live sports,

A consistent problem I've seen with e-books and streaming video is lack of live content, in particular breaking & current news. Apple provides some live sports, and just added SkyNews, but that's all third-party encapsulated content limited to AppleTV. Google scrapes the Web for news, but just gives pointers to content instead of packaging it. Bezos isn't buying a newspaper, he's buying a content-gathering service - it might not be big, but the core infrastructure is in place to get the content and curate it without negotiating with a fiercely protective third party. We've been observing the demise of news outlets. The demise continues so long as the owners fight to retain total control of their distribution to eyeballs; having given up, WP has finally given total control to someone who does control distribution of content to a whole lotta readers & viewers. Expect the rebranding of WP as Amazon News, and watch it explode onto the news scene giving CNN, Fox, etc a desperate run for their money.

freehunter 13y ago
Almost as easily as I can imagine Kindle Newspapers being improved by this, I can imagine Prime Instant Streaming having a live news channel. I'd be down for it.
jeffasinger 13y ago
I think if the ultimate goal was to integrate the WaPo with Prime, he may have made the purchase as Amazon, instead of as a personal purchase. There's something else going on here.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Amazon per se may not be interested in WaPo per se under current conditions, but repackaged into a suitable form it may be. Bezos could make a tidy sum selling an Internet-future-ready news service to Amazon.
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    That's a potential nightmare of self-dealing that I don't think is Bezos (or Amazon's) style. You'd have to get some third party to come in and validate the transaction price as fair, etc. Amazon's done a number of transactions where it chose to maintain or transform the target as a separate entity (think Zappos, IMDb), so if he thought there was long term interest he would have just had Amazon buy it.

freehunter 13y ago

Almost as easily as I can imagine Kindle Newspapers being improved by this, I can imagine Prime Instant Streaming having a live news channel. I'd be down for it.

jeffasinger 13y ago

I think if the ultimate goal was to integrate the WaPo with Prime, he may have made the purchase as Amazon, instead of as a personal purchase. There's something else going on here.

ctdonath 13y ago
Amazon per se may not be interested in WaPo per se under current conditions, but repackaged into a suitable form it may be. Bezos could make a tidy sum selling an Internet-future-ready news service to Amazon.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  That's a potential nightmare of self-dealing that I don't think is Bezos (or Amazon's) style. You'd have to get some third party to come in and validate the transaction price as fair, etc. Amazon's done a number of transactions where it chose to maintain or transform the target as a separate entity (think Zappos, IMDb), so if he thought there was long term interest he would have just had Amazon buy it.