B&N to acquire Borders?

Link: B&N Open to Possible Borders Purchase - 3/20/2008 8:57:00 AM - Publishers Weekly
Please, say it isn't so!

Asked during its year end conference call if Barnes & Noble has any interest in buying Borders, chief operating officer Mitchell Klipper said that while the company has not been approached by Borders’s investment bankers, B&N would look at the possibility of acquiring its chief rival.

B&N is coming off of a soft year in which net income fell 9.8% for the fiscal year ended February 2, 2008, to $135.8 million, while earnings in the fourth quarter declined 9.2%, to $115 million. Earlier this year, B&N reported that total revenue rose 2.8%, to $5.41 billion in the year, and fell 1.7%, to $1.88 billion in the quarter. Results in 2006 reflect 53 weeks, compared to 52 weeks last year.

What ever happened to the whole anti-trust thing? I don't see it conceivable that one company, namely B&N, can possibly own all the big bookstores in the country. Already B&N, along with Borders, has been decimating the independents, but if B&N is allowed to purchase Borders they will be in total control of the book retail business in the United States. This would be bad news for readers, publishers, writers, people who hang out and read magazines for free while drinking coffee, aliens searching for self help books, and just about anyone else who enjoys the printed page.

I'll be honest: Borders has always been my favorite of the mega-chain bookstores, but I'll choose to support an independent if I can find one close by. But just as Tower Records fell a few years ago, I feel that once an e-book standard is agreed upon so too will be the fate of B&N. It's only a matter of time. The book industry is the slowest to adapt to market conditions, so we can probably learn a lot of what's going to happen from a business perspective by examining the music industry in the late 90s.