Was Kindle Designed To Aid Amazon’s Market Discipline?

Or did Hachette simply piss off the “boss” by preparing to offer books in the right format for the Sony Reader? This might be a long one – resources aplenty on this topic :)
Doreen Carvahal wrote in The NY Times recently;
Small Publishers Feel Power of Amazon’s ‘Buy’ Button
In the latest in a series of disputes over the division of revenue from online sales, Amazon has disabled the “buy now with 1 click” icon on its British Web site for hundreds of books published by the British unit of Hachette Livre, from back-list Stephen King novels to, naturally, “The Hachette Guide …read more