In the intervening years, Amazon has done little to integrate Book Depository, from a branding perspective at least. However, despite industry protests, the deal ultimately received regulatory approval, with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) affirming at the time that Book Depository wasn’t a true competitor owing to its relative size. At the time of the acquisition, some feared that it signaled a tightening of Amazon’s “stranglehold” over the U.K.’s online book trade, a fear that may have had more than a little foundation. The news comes hot on the heels of a swath of cutbacks at the internet giant, with two separate rounds of layoffs impacting at least 27,000 people across various divisions, including its highly profitable AWS cloud unit and, indeed, its devices and books businesses.įounded out of Gloucester, the U.K., in 2004, Book Depository (initially called The Book Depository) was a small-scale competitor to Amazon’s online bookselling business, shipping books to readers in more than 100 countries. Amazon is set to shutter Book Depository, an online bookstore and competitor it acquired back in 2011.

Amazon reading books online