Over dinner, Dennis mentioned that one of his cohorts had purchased a Nook (Barnes & Noble's e-reader). Cohort is a voracious reader with limited living space, so it makes huge sense. Alas, my primary use for a Nook is canceled out by B&N's appalling lack of digital offerings in programming books. I suppose if I traveled a lot, an iPad would make more sense than carrying an eReader and netbook (assuming that a viable Linux/Android-powered tablet doesn't hit the market, naturally).
I haven't done much business with Amazon since they went over to The Dark Side in the late 90s, so I'm blaming that grudge for not thinking of this sooner. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) Amazon's been in the music/movie business for quite some time. They've also spent a lot of bling building the cloud app/storage sideline, which--until now--seemed to me like quite the break from their core competencies of online retailing. Their e-reader, the Kindle, already downloads digital book purchases via WhisperNet. Granted, the Nook has music playback, but Barnes & Noble seems to be ambling in the direction of supporting networking in the more peer-to-peer sense (i.e. friends can borrow your books) than with the internet at large.
The upshot is my guess that, in renting out application/storage horsepower, Amazon is not necessarily interested in it as a long-term cash cow. (That sort of thing tends become a commodity sooner or later.) Rather, their current customers may be in fact subsidizing not only the initial outlay for hardware and staffing, but also Amazon's learning-curve in mastering the art of scalability. Then, too, Amazon has the brand equity in books/music/video that Google does not. All of which, were I one of Steve Jobs' minions, would keep me awake at night wondering what tricks the next edition of the Kindle will do.
