It's a terrible example (or perhaps a "fantastic" example of a company avoiding reality for eons). The writing has been on the wall for EB for at least 15 years, in fact there was even a book written about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Blown-Bits-Economics-Information-Trans...

How do we know they're even going to make money now?

I had a chairman during the first dot-com bubble who would carry around a copy of 'Blown to Bits'[1] and read from it like it was his bible.

It is the earliest source, that I know of, of the theory that software and the web will destroy every other industry - and it was from the mid-90s (the HBR article was).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Blown-Bits-Economics-Information-Trans...