Rivals Dogpile on Amazon

Jeff Bezos named his company after the longest and largest river in the world. So it's appropriate that the past week has shown just how influential Amazon has become in both the online and offline retail spaces, as competitors and the Seattle-based e-commerce giant threw a series of punches and counter-punches.

Try to keep up with the opponents' jabs :

• On Friday, real-world retail behemoth Wal-Mart announced price cuts to as low as US$10, and free shipping, for some forthcoming titles by Sarah Palin, John Grisham and Stephen King when pre-ordered on its Web site. The retailer is also cutting prices on books now available in its stores as Wal-Mart attempts a combined bricks-and-mortar/online attack on Amazon's bookselling dominance.
• Google announced that next year it will offer Google Editions, the search company's strategy for online bookstores that will enable consumers to read e-books on any device with a Web browser.
• Earlier in the week, Gizmodo posted some leaked images of what may be a Barnes & Noble-branded e-reader with touchscreen capabilities. The photos spread throughout the blogosphere, with some headlines actually employing the phrase "Kindle-killer."

Barnes & Noble Aims to Take Down Kindle, by Hook or by Nook

It doesn't matter whether Amazon Kindle has 60 percent market share, or that Sony has its powerful brand backing its Reader. Barnes & Noble wants in on the nascent e-reader market.

For reasons not apparent at press time, Barnes & Noble is calling its new electronic reading device the Nook, officially launching it during a late-afternoon Eastern time press event Tuesday in New York City. A Wednesday conference call was scheduled for media, but plenty of Nook information had already leaked out before the Tuesday afternoon event via a Gizmodo report last week, a Tuesday morning Wall Street Journal story -- and Barnes and Noble's own Web site, which went live with images and details about the Nook several hours prior to the press event.

Those details make it clear that the real-world bookseller, with more than 700 physical locations in the U.S. and an online store, is making a serious attempt to dethrone the Kindle as the early e-reader market leader. What's also clear is that the entire e-reader market is getting as crowded as the Stephen King section in a Barnes & Noble.