The high-fives must have been flying at Amazon(s amzn) this morning: millions of the company’s customers got notices to spend credits at its Kindle store, and Amazon didn’t have to pay a cent. Meanwhile, rival Apple(s aapl) will likely underwrite an even bigger shopping spree for Amazon customers sometime yet year.
Welcome to the ironic denouement of l’affaire ebooks, which reached a climax in 2013 when a federal judge found that Apple had brokered a conspiracy with book publishers to fix prices. The legal tussle resulted in the publishers settling their cases — which is what paid for the customer credits that went out today — while Apple fought on alone.
For now, the biggest winner is Amazon, which already dominated the ebook market at the time of the price-fixing scheme in 2010. Today, as a result of lawsuits brought by the Justice Department and state governments, Amazon is in an even stronger position with the publishers; it will also get a healthy cut of the $160 million or…
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