Irony: Read Kindle Books On Your Rooted NookColor
Just when we thought the NookColor was just a B&N reading device, hackers have rooted the devices and ported the Kindle reading app to the platform, ensuring plenty of migraines around Barnes & Noble HQ this week.
Context & Ripple Effects
The hack repeats a pattern Barnes & Noble already knows: hackers tore down and rooted the original E Ink Nook a year ago (the December 2009 root), and the company chose to live with it. What is new is the target — the NookColor's Android foundation, which CNET reported on before launch (the October 2010 report of an Android-based color Nook) means the device is a general-purpose tablet wearing a bookstore's skin.
That makes this port different from the 2009 episode. The Engadget review of the NookColor framed it as a reading-first device; running Amazon's Kindle app on it converts Barnes & Noble's flagship into a neutral screen, and the embarrassment at B&N HQ stems less from the breach than from what it proves about the hardware.
First-order effects
- Rooted NookColor owners gain direct access to Amazon's Kindle store and library on Barnes & Noble hardware, undercutting the device's role as a locked funnel into B&N's ebook business.
- Amazon acquires readers on a competitor's device at zero distribution cost, while Barnes & Noble must decide whether to push firmware updates to relock the bootloader.
Second-order effects
- If Barnes & Noble locks the device down, it risks alienating the enthusiast community that made the original Nook 'respected' after its 2009 root; if it tolerates the hacks, its content-store margins erode on its own hardware.
- Rival reader makers face the same dilemma, since any Android-based ereader is now demonstrably one root away from hosting every competing bookstore.
Third-order effects
- Ereaders built on Android drift toward becoming general-purpose tablets, shifting competition from device exclusivity to who controls the software layer — the platform-gatekeeper problem now applied to books.
- Content companies may respond by treating cheap dedicated hardware as a loss leader for store lock-in, accepting that determined users will always route around it.
The trend: Dedicated ereaders are converging with Android tablets, moving the contest between bookstores from the shelf to the software stack.