Microsoft Deal Kills Barnes & Noble

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2013-07-13 16:22:56 UTC
Modified: 2013-07-13 16:22:56 UTC

Barnes and Noble

Summary: Barnes & Noble loses its CEO who rendered the company just another Microsoft prey

THE CEO of B & N quits after he agreed to be a puppy of Ballmer in exchange for a little bribe, turning the company from a Microsoft challenger into some kind of strange proxy like Novell. Let's look at some of the latest developments

A few weeks ago we started to mention how B & N had collapsed. Taking a bribe from Microsoft rather than suing Microsoft wasn't a smart move and the CEO of B & N quits now. How could he be so gullible? Has he not seen that dead path of companies at the entrance of Microsoft's cave? Anyway, he is out now. Pamela Jones writes: "That isn't how I view it. I view it that Microsoft is killing off anyone selling Android/Linux whenever possible, whether by partnerships (Nokia) or investments or litigation. The Nook was doing great until Microsoft entered the picture by trying to force Barnes & Noble to pay royalties allegedly owed for running Linux on the Nook. None of the patents were needed by Barnes & Noble, according to them, and next thing we hear is Microsoft has settled the case against it and will invest in Barnes & Noble, and next we see this."

Here is a later report with some numbers:

Not long after Microsoft’s investment, though, Nook sales began to decline precipitously. In the most recent quarter, Nook revenues fell 34 percent, and were down 16.8 percent for the year. It’s unclear why anybody would want to buy Nook Media outright now; there were rumors that Microsoft might do so, but months have passed without an offer (if it were interested, Microsoft could get a pretty good deal right about now).

We already called for a boycott of B & N, following those iffy moves that made the company more dangerous than beneficial to Android and Free software in general. Jones added : "If the point was to kill off another Android vendor, what would be the point of buying the company?"

A shame really. B & N ended up like Novell, which BN (Boycott Novell) saw turning into a Microsoft proxy following a horrible deal. ⬆

Microsoft XBox is Dying as More Retailers Stop Stocking It and Massive Layoffs Planned Again: Microsoft is circling down the drain
Linux and the Freedom Paradox: Linux is losing freedom if some external actors who only use Microsoft tools for development wrest control
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream): It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant: The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
Links 05/10/2025: Slow News Day and Wondering About the Canada Post Walkout: Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/10/2025: Telnet Debugging and The Programmer’s Brain: Links for the day
More Than "Just a Rumour": XBox Seems to Have Just Died: At this point, why would any studio out there target or partner with XBox?
How to Tell Your Community, Project or Company is Being Infiltrated by Saboteurs: How to identify nefarious social engineering
The Fortieth Birthday of the FSF Made Us Extremely Happy: It feels like the 'hacker community' is regrouping to discuss things and prepare for the next Big Challenge
Chat Control 2 Them, Not 2 U: Follow the advice of Dr. Patrick Breyer
Mozilla: Throw Away Your "Old" PC and Enable "Digital Rights Management (DRM)": This is heading in a bad direction
Controlling Our Computing for Another Forty Years: 40 years of freedom
Motivational Small Place to Run Large Sites: We deem this scenery motivational and inspiring
Techrights' Text Version (Daily Bulletin) Turns Five This Month: our plain-text bulletins are turning 5 this month
We'll Continue Covering the Moribund OSI and Other Dysfunctional if Not Hostile Institutions: Stefano Maffulli's departure is due to his defection and due to him failing the mission in pursuit of money (his salary)
Links 05/10/2025: Lufthansa Layoffs (4,000) and More Spotify Woes (Aside From Massive Debt): Links for the day
The Free Software Foundation's Livestream Has Ended, Video/s Might be Online Next: I've asked whether they'll upload video of some of the event; I still wait for an answer
The Register MS Does Not Know the Difference Between Microsoft GitHub and GitLab: At the time of writing (October 5) the article from "Thu 2 Oct 2025" remains uncorrected
"Bullshit Generators" (What RMS Calls LLMs) and Fake Images Already Target the FSF: Why does Google News promote fake articles about the FSF while omitting all the real ones?
Software Patents as a Bubble: Don't invest resources in hype; if you detect a bubble, run away from it
Links 05/10/2025: Political Leftovers, Climate Change, and Security Incidents: Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 04, 2025: IRC logs for Saturday, October 04, 2025
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army': Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless: how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason): The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems: Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents: software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat...": Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library: Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor: Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun: We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die: Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16: very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones: Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk: Links for the day
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time: A rough summary
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US: Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents: Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days: Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40: We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025: IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time": Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET): For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad: Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good: we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda): Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People: Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots: For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux": Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm: I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk: Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration: Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released: Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days: It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe: Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025: IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity: They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt: Links for the day

Microsoft Deal Kills Barnes & Noble

Recent Techrights' Posts