Amazon blasted yet again

The Guardian newspaper claim that Amazon are trying to do to the book industry what Tesco has done to British farmers - by virtually giving the product away they hope to achieve market dominance. And then, when there is only the one online book seller, the prices will rise. The recent spat between the online giants and publisher, Macmillan as well as the launch of the iPad is seen as a very real challenge. Though Amazon deny that the recent successful launch of the iPad had anything to do with the surrendering to Macmillan over eBook pricing.

Type in Ipad into search and Google will offer you "about 86,000,000" results for the past year. Print those pages out – now including this one – and they would probably reach to the moon, which may be the only place left not reeling from iPad coverage mania (or ennui; delete as appropriate). But after all the build-up, the hype, the gushing reviews, is it really going to change media? Is it a lifeline for publishers, schedulers – or just another toy?