landmarks

Context is provided by the broader timeline about media and communications history.

     beginnings

1917 Barnes & Noble founded

1962 Walden Book Company founded by Lawrence Hoyt

1965 Leonard Riggio establishes Student Book Exchange (SBX) in Greenwich Village

1969 Walden Books acquired by retail conglomerate Carter Hawley Hale

1969 Barnes & Noble acquired by Amtel retail conglomerate

1971 Riggio buys ailing Barnes & Noble for US$1.2m

1971 Borders formed by Tom & Louis Borders

1977 Barnes & Noble buys BookMasters and Marboro Books chains

1981 Waldenbooks has 750 outlets

1984 Waldenbooks buys Brentano's chain

1984 buys Longmeadow Press

1984 K-Mart buys Waldenbooks chain

1986 Barnes & Noble explores online marketing through Trintex (Sears, CBS and IBM joint venture videotext service that becomes Prodigy in 1988)

1987 buys B. Dalton Bookseller (797 retail bookstores) from Dayton-Hudson retail conglomerate

1987 buys Doubleday Book Shops from Bertelsmann

1987 buys Scribners retail operation

1989 buys BookStop discount superstore chain (24 units)

1990 Steve Bezos becomes Vice President of Bankers Trust

1992 becomes Senior Vice President of Wall Street investment house D E Shaw & Co

1992 K-Mart acquires Borders for US$100m, forms Borders-Walden Group

1993 Barnes & Noble goes public

     Amazon.com

1994 Bezos founds Amazon.com

1994 Borders-Walden buys Planet Music chain

1995 Borders-Walden Group spun off amid K-Mart financial crisis, becomes Borders Group Inc

1995 Amazon site goes live, has US$15.7 million sales

1996 Barnes & Noble has 1,000 stores, aggregate US$2.4bn sales

1997 barnesandnoble.com launched

1997 eToys launched

1997 Crown Books superstore chain collapses

1997 Borders opens first outlet outside US (in Singapore)

1997 Amazon tagged as 'Amazon.toast' by Forrester Research

1997 Amazon raises US$54 million in IPO

1998 Amazon adds music CDs and movie videos

1998 launches sites in Germany and United Kingdom

1998 Borders expands into UK

1998 Bertelsmann buys 50% of barnesandnoble.com

1999 Barnes & Noble abandons US$600m takeover of Ingram

1999 Borders buys 20% of Sprout

     diversification

1999 Amazon.com buys 46% of drugstore.com

1999 launches auction service

1999 Amazon adds toys, electronics, software, video games and home improvement items

1999 Amazon sales reach US$1.6bn, with US$550m cumulative loss

1999 Bertelsmann and Barnes & Noble float 20% of barnesandnoble.com for US$422m

1999 Bezos becomes Time 'Man of the Year'

2000 Amazon launches sites in Japan and France

2000 Amazon takes US$60m stake in Kozmo.com delivery service (folded in 2001)

2000 alliance with Toys R Us

2000 criticised by EPIC and others for selling customer data

2000 Burda takes stake in justbooks.de

2001 Amazon reports loss of US$1.4bn

2001 announces alliance with Borders

2001 eToys goes bankrupt

2001 Barnes & Noble buys SparkNotes.com

2001 justbooks.de acquired by AbeBooks.com (est 1995), subsequently largest online marketplace for rare books

2002 Amazon adds apparel items

2002 announces first quarterly profit

2003 Amazon.com US$8.4bn market capitalisation is equivalent to 40% of General Motors

2003 establishes A9 search engine subsidiary

2003 unveils 'Search Inside the Book' technology

2003 Barnes & Noble buys Sterling Publishing

2003 launches Barnes & Noble Classics imprint

2003 buys Bertelsmann stake in barnesandnoble.com for US$164m

2004 buys public stake in barnesandnoble.com

2004 spins off GameStop subsidiary (US video game retailer with 1,500 stores)

2004 AbeBooks acquires Spanish company IberLibro

2004 Amazon reports first annual profit

2005 buys French e-book specialist Mobipocket

2005 Burda increases stake in Abebooks.com

2005 AbeBooks acquires BookFinder.com metasearch shopping service

2006 AbeBooks buys inventory and order-management company FillZ

2006 Amazon buys stake in Wikia

2006 pays US$2m for ArmchairGM

2006 AbeBooks buys 40% stake in LibraryThing social network service

2007 Amazon launches Kindle e-book device

2008 buys audio book specialist Audible for US$300m

2008 Burda sells AbeBooks to Amazon.com




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