Andy Greenberg’s column on The Future of eBooks misses the biggest innovation that the Kindle could deliver over time: saving the newspaper and print publishing industry from near-extinction due to declining ad revenues.

Imagine reading Forbes or The New York Times via the Kindle and being able to view and then click on advertisements that take you directly to checkout pages or to product review pages or to send an email to your wife so that she adds that item to her holiday shopping list. Imagine being able to click on related links that take you to videos, other news articles, and even books or DVDs (some of which also conveniently exist in Amazon’s vast warehouse) about a topic that interests you. Being able to consolidate a number of newspapers, magazines and books onto a lightweight, readable device may be just enough to get consumers interested in buying this new technology. But being able to offer advertisers and publishers a platform to capitalize upon a consumer’s impulse purchase decisions certainly seems like more than enough to get advertisers and publishers to start salivating.

So, positioning Kindle as simply a cool new ‘form factor’ for published materials built on neat technology simply underestimates its potential. I think it could very well become an uber-catalyst – uniting publishers, advertisers and readers around a software platform that enables new revenue streams for them, including the newspaper industry, which we know is already gasping for breath. Over the last year or so, Amazon has previewed its interest in advancing a platform strategy. Amazon Web Services has already enabled more than 200,000 developers, small businesses and Fortune 1000 companies to leverage its vast web infrastructure and recently launched its own payment platform. And Kindle also has a Digital Text application that allows publishers to easily prepare content for distribution via the device. The Kindle could very well be the catalyst that reshapes the media ecosystem.

Take a look at the article “5 Strategies for Newspaper Survival” that I co-authored with Karen Webster in the summer of 2007, published this Fall, which actually describes a Kindle-like scenario as newspaper nirvana. Perhaps, thanks to Kindle, nirvana is a lot closer than we think.

What do you think?