Amazon Swallows Up Goodreads

Is Amazon your friend?
(image: janefriedman.com)

With the ink barely dry on the Amazon-CIA contract, the Seattle-based tech colossus has purchased the social media book site Goodreads, according to a report in today's Financial Times. The FT report did not cite a purchase price, or other acquisition details. As is Amazon's characteristic practice, the deal announcement was made via a statement. This Amazon tactic is intended to keep the media at arm's length, so that pesky questions are never acknowledged and Amazon can keep an iron grip on its message.

Goodreads was founded and owned by Otis Chandler, the grandson of the eponymous Chandler who was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. (A fascinating piece on the investment side of Goodreads appears courtesy of Wade Roush's interview with its two venture capital investors. The story appears in xconomy.com.)

The tale of the tape is that Chandler the Youngest saw opportunity to link books and readers together. While that assertion may be accurate, his larger intention was to build a successful tech company. What many of Goodreads' bibliophiles did not realize was that the site essentially was a data collection machine. In that sense, it fit neatly into Amazon's business model. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, has consistently maintained to anyone who would listen that his company has always been first and foremost a tech enterprise.

Amazon's sense of timing was exquisite. The story was reported in the late afternoon hours prior to Good Friday. The markets happen to be closed on Good Friday, and many people have been celebrating the Passover and Easter holidays. The slow news cycle was a made-to-order event for the Amazon coup.

Of course, the Obama Administration's pro-Amazon Department of Justice has not made any comment on Goodreads' annexation into Jeff Bezos' expanding tech empire.