Why Wait?

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke at a conference sponsored by Fortune and gushed about the wonders of the Kindle. When asked what Amazon will do when Google and Wikipedia create a digital database of books that can be downloaded and printed in minutes, Bezos replied, “I don’t know why anyone would wait five minutes for a book.”

Ouch. Fine point.

He continues to say, “Our vision for Kindle is we want to have every book in print or out of print, all available in less than 60 seconds. The medium time to download a book [on the Kindle] is 23 seconds.”

Currently there are over 140,000 titles available for download on the Kindle. When shopping from the built-in Kindle store, the titles download faster than I can even get back to the home screen. Sending an item wirelessly from Amazon.com takes slightly longer, but never five minutes.