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BarnesandNoble.com Buys Fatbrain

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from the skinny-brains dept

Wed, Sep 13th 2000 6:58pm — Mike Masnick
Apparently, BarnesandNoble.com is buying Fatbrain the bookseller that focuses on computers and technical books. Fatbrain used to be Computer Literacy. What confuses me a little is why BarnesandNoble is buying them. I can see why Fatbrain would sell out, but I'm not sure I see the benefit to BarnesandNoble.
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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 Sep 2000 @ 7:35pm

    No Subject Given

    Benefit??? One less competitor.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 14 Sep 2000 @ 3:08am

      Re: No Subject Given

      One less very small competitor. I'm not sure that $60 million, or whatever they paid for it, is worth it to get rid of one clearly non-threatening competitor.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Ryan, 14 Sep 2000 @ 7:29am

        110% stupid move!

        I guess it's just another sign of how barnes and noble still doesn't get the net. It's annoying how stupid some companies can be, if they had waited long enough I'm sure fatbrain would have headed down the toilet within a few short months anyway and they'd have saved a nice little packet but that's the price you pay for not knowing your market.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          mhh5, 15 Sep 2000 @ 1:29am

          Re: 110% stupid move!

          How much are customers worth? Maybe B&N thought that if they spent $60M now, that would save them advertizing and soliciting costs later? Why start from scratch? I'm not sure how much customers are worth or what it means to say your company has X million register users... (Stats like that are always fishy. I think I saw a stat that said the number of registered users of AOL IM was about half the population of the US or something stupidly high.) But how many customers do you think are worth $60M?

          [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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