Lexcycle announced yesterday that they’ve been acquired by Amazon, which either comes as good news to you if you like industry consolidation, or bad if it worries you what Amazon might be planning (eg. the curious case of Mobipocket). However, Marc from Lexcycle was quick to dispel some of the fear by way of his blog:

“We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.”

Lexcycle Inc. has been of the little Davids of the ebook world. They are a little group that set out to build an ebook reading application for the iPhone and they quickly fostered a great following. Their free application, Stanza, has been one of the break-out hits among ebook enthusiasts, allowing people to use their iPhone to gain access to unfettered free e-books on the net, while supporting major formats like .pdb and mobipocket (non-DRM only). They were also able to wrangle Fictionwise.com & eReader DRM support, including shopping for ebooks (so you can buy E-Reads titles) through Stanza via its online catalogs (with a special Stanza account). And most importantly, they’ve been rallying support for ePub. Stanza has one of the best implementations of support for the darling new standard.

But rather than attempting to defeat one of the roaming giants of the digital frontier, Amazon’s Kindle, it seems that they’ve allowed themselves to be gobbled up. Amazon surely noticed that Stanza was more popular than their Kindle application for the iPhone. So, what will happen? Could it mean Kindle support (finally) on Stanza? Or is it a way of competing against (and potentially blocking) Barnes & Noble, who now own Fictionwise?

In the minds of many Stanza fans, Stanza should be an open ebook reader and open sales platform, where all sorts of vendors can feed various formats, DRM’d or otherwise, and allow everyone to compete fairly. This is contrary to the strict boundaries that Amazon uses to protect its sales. But I think the agenda at Lexcycle has always been to give people a great tool to read, and that’s why working with the very powerful (and wealthy) Amazon is still a means to that end. I think that’s how Stanza was envisioned at its onset, so I’m not necessarily worried yet. Both companies have been responsible for the growing acceptance of ebooks in the last year. These are all people who genuinely care about the ebook experience. They could be a good fit.

- Michael Gaudet