Microsoft Is Talking About Spending A Billion To Buy Barnes & Noble's Digital Business

This comes from leaked documents that outline the proposal as well as Nook Media's plan to stop using Android by early 2015 as it transitions from being a hardware company to being a content distribution company.

There's been lots of talk and speculation about the state of the Nook tablet in the e-reader market, and it's been pretty unanimously negative. It's been losing money and ground as it competes alongside the Kindle family of devices.

Microsoft's proposal for the company might strike you as weird, but Maxim Group analyst John Tinker thinks otherwise: "If the reports are true, it’s a wonder that it has taken so long for Microsoft to make this move. If they want to compete with Apple, Microsoft has to be fully invested and the financial backing is needed to make this work."