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Codebreaker

Amazon offers cheaper ad-supported Kindle

John Moe Apr 12, 2011


The new model will cost $114,
that’s 25 bucks off the current price. It goes on sale May 3rd. The ads will appear as screen savers and as small banner ads at the bottom of the home screen when the Kindle is in use. There won’t be any ads in the actual books you read. At least not yet. It’s an interesting proposition to see what kind of ad tolerance people have. $25 off the price is nice (one wonders why they couldn’t drive it down to $99 but whatever) but we are talking about ads forever on this thing. So you save, what, the cost of one hard cover book or a pizza plus a salad, but you get a lifetime of advertisements? Some analysts are pretty excited about this new Kindle, saying Amazon is outflanking Google, but I’ll wait to see the sales figures. Oh wait! There won’t be any! Amazon always keeps its Kindle sales figures secret.

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