It seems Amazon is stealing a play from the Bill Gates playbook: If you have serious competition, just buy the company. GalleyCat reports that Amazon has bought Lexcycle, the company that makes Stanza, the most popular ebook app for the iPhone.

As this move comes shortly after Amazon released their own Kindle-for-iPhone app, it looks like Amazon is now in control of a good chunk of their ebook competition. According to the Lexcyle press release, they're not planning on making any changes. I guess what really matters now is, what is Amazon planning?