An entertaining read about how Amazon botched the publicity side of their fight with Macmillan.

Instead, we got the Foot-Stompingly Petulant Friday Night Massacre: One minute the books were there, the next they weren’t. And everyone was left going “huh?” Was it a hardware glitch? Was it a software bug? Was it a terrorist act in which renegade Amish attacked Amazon’s server farm and poured jugs of hard cider into the machines, shorting out the ones holding Macmillan’s vasty inventory? No! It was one corporate entity having a big fat hissy fit at another corporate entity, and everyone had to figure out what the hell was going on the weekend from bits and pieces that they found on the Internet, which was not easy to do. Which may have been Amazon’s plan all along: Kill every sixth book on your site, hope no one notices! Well played, Amazon, well played indeed.

I feel like this is the same problem that we see when cable companies fight with the networks. The companies try to take the fight to their customers, and they find out that their customers do not care at all about corporate backroom deals. We just want to watch TV, man.