Amazon Set to Buy Lovefilm

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Big news for you home theater buffs out there, especially those of you out in Europe, as Lovefilm, the metaphorical European equivalent of Netflix, finds itself brought into the fold out at Amazon, who recently announced plans to buy the remaining stock of Lovefilm and bring it under Amazon’s operations.

Amazon reportedly paid a whopping $320 million to pick up the stock that it didn’t already own, and management will reportedly continue on as-is. This actually falls in line with several moves that showed Amazon was looking to be a player in the video market too. Moves like the creation of Amazon Studios to help get film projects going under its own aegis, and of course, the steady expansion of movies, music and games that were available for streaming online all lent to the suggestion that they were looking to play in Netflix’s pool, and the acquisition of Lovefilm, which basically does exactly what Netflix does but in large portions of Europe, only helps to cement the concept further.

This actually comes at a good time for Amazon–and a thoroughly lousy time for Netflix, who had apparently been considering eating Lovefilm’s lunch and putting its own systems into the European market–because now it gives them a very solid foothold from which to operate. But this is only a foothold–Lovefilm’s market was pretty much limited, from the sounds of things, to England, Germany and most of the Scandinavian countries (excluding, for some reason, Finland). Still though, considering the kind of clout Amazon swings, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see the non-Lovefilm countries suddenly find themselves with a lot more in the way of options fairly soon here.

Just where exactly this all goes is a topic of some debate, but it’s certainly a shakeup in the marketplace that’s well worth keeping an eye on.