http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/4/7332117/microsoft-sells-nook-stake-back-to-barnes-noble

Microsoft and Barnes & Noble unveiled a "strategic partnership" back in April 2012 which involved the software maker investing $300 million for a stake in a separate digital Nook business. Two years later, Barnes & Noble is now buying back Microsoft’s 17.6 percent stake for $62 million and around 2.7 million Barnes & Noble shares, a clear loss on Microsoft’s original investment. Barnes & Noble revealed the purchased in a document filed with the SEC today, and it’s not immediately clear why Microsoft is selling its stake. A company spokesperson says "as the respective business strategies of each company evolved, we mutually agreed that it made sense to terminate the agreement."

At the time of the original deal, it appeared to be a move from Microsoft to position itself with an ecosystem to compete in the e-reader business, but very little has resulted from the partnership. A Nook Windows 8 reading app launched, but Microsoft-powered e-readers were never promised and never launched. Earlier this year, Samsung and Barnes & Noble partnered to create a co-branded device called the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook running Android, the first sign of life in the Nook lineup of ebook readers and tablets for quite some time.

Just to clarify, Barnes & Noble stock trades at little under $20, so the complete buyback was about $116 million, or a $184 million loss for Microsoft.

Dang, I would have thought the Nook would have been huge back in the day too.

Makes sense considering how little amount of people use the windows 8 app store, specially for book related things

To quote a famous businessman:

"Lol, that's cute" - Jeff Bezos

The Nook is great, but their biggest competition is Amazon. I personally think that the Nooks are better than the Kindle/Fires, but Amazon seems to have more exposure than B&N due to their online presence of selling everything under the sun.

Cool. Now sell Rare back to Nintendo and its all good

Still don't understand why we cover company stuff like this on here. It's not gaming related in any way.

It should be obvious. Unless you're being sarcastic of course.
It's also the reason shareholders are talked about so much.

Why not? Most people usually tend to have more than one interest in life outside gaming. Some like movies, so we have a subforum for movies discussion, some like sports and post there, some like politics and open topics about that, and none if those are connected to gaming either.

This is a part of the forum called Microsoft discussion, and this topic discusses Microsoft. If you are not interested, you are free to not read it...

R.i.p microsoft 1975-2014 gbnf