I like new technology.  I like Amazon.com.   I hate the Kindle.  Actually, I love the Kindle, but I hate what Amazon has done with the business model around it.

If you need, for example, Sparknotes for Hamlet right now, you can get it through Barnes & Noble’s new e-book offering, but you’ll fail tomorrow’s English Literature quiz if you have a Kindle.  There are many more examples like this.  E-book readers can never fully take off until one device can serve a complete set of needs.

The e-book market is going the way of Betamax vs. VHS or HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray.  While this format war continues, consumers will stick to plain old paper books when they might prefer a Kindle if they could get most of what they wanted on it.

It didn’t have to be this way — Amazon was positioned to preemptively win the war with its vast network of titles and huge base of customers.  When it launched the Kindle, it initially did the right things:

• Amazon got the rights to a whole bunch of e-books to prove the viability of the format
• It developed the pretty good (but not fantastic) Kindle to further prove the viability of the format.

But then they messed up.  They didn’t share the platform, and other companies went on the offensive.  Sony already had its eReader which became more popular due to the large publicity around the Kindle.  And now Barnes & Noble is trying to get a piece of the pie.  As a result, that pie is going to remain much smaller than it could have for a very long time.

What could Amazon have done?  I think that, after jump starting the industry with the Kindle, Amazon should have opened the Amazon e-book format to other hardware developers who could create an ecosystem of devices to suit the needs of more people.  With more devices that suit more needs, more people start using them, people buy more books on Amazon (on any device of their choosing), and Amazon makes more long-term profit in the process.