Barnes & Noble announced, this past week, their new e-book reader to compete with the Amazon Kindle. A couple under-reported key things about the nook.

1. The nook runs on Google’s new Android operating system. This doesn’t sound like a big deal at first but when you realize this is the first non-cellular consumer device to officially run the android operating system it IS a big deal. Just another example of Google taking over the world. Android is open and the idea that at some point, this device could be extended by open source developers is very cool.

2. Sharing! When I asked the wife if she wanted a kindle the first thing she said was “I can’t share books with my friends, forget it.” Sharing is the killer feature of the nook. I remember when I first got a ReplayTV and sites were spinning up around sharing shows via the features built into that device, it was huge. We will see the same with the nook and the LendME feature.

Bottom line competition is good for any business and this new war between Amazon and B&N will only help drive both products to a better price point and push features faster and further.