Borders died yesterday Some 400 stores closing, 11,000 employees out of work. Last minute auction didn’t really happen and so off it goes to liquidation. Hard to go with the idea that it was Amazon.com itself that killed Borders. After all, Amazon has been selling books at a pretty good clip for 15 years now and Borders at least existed during that time, sometimes even thriving. But if you wanted to present the case that it was the Kindle explosion that did Borders in, well, I would be hard pressed to argue with you. The mega book store was kind of fun, in a way, nice place to discover things, talk with occasionally helpful and intermittently bookish staff. But if you hold a lightweight reader in your hand and can buy books through it and for it, hard to beat that for a lot of people.
I know what you’re thinking, though: WHAT ABOUT KOBO? The little book reader closely associated with Borders? Well, arrangements have been in the works for a while for it to live on. It’s is its own company and will focus more on the international side.