About a month ago, Amazon bought Goodreads, a popular social network for reviewing and recommending books. The reason was obvious: Goodreads in the Kindle Store. But what a new report shows is that the buyout was also a move to steal Goodreads away from a potential partnership with Apple.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple was talking to Goodreads about integrating with the iBookstore. Goodreads reviews were going to show up alongside iTunes reviews, like how Rotten Tomatoes reviews are currently displayed for movies in the iTunes Store.
The two companies had been going back and forth about the possibility over the past year, and Apple asked Goodreads to partner again in March of this year. “iTunes officials were perplexed when Goodreads executives went quiet,” according to the Journal.
That’s because Amazon had proposed a multi-million dollar acquisition. Now Goodreads will assumedly be integrated into the Kindle Store.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
