All mega-conglomerates are more or less similarly soul-deadened, all said and done, but it is hard not to root for one over the other sometimes. For example: Much hoop-de-hoo was made of the fact that, in June, Target started selling Kindles. It seemed like the next stage of Amazon’s march to total world dominion, not just of the Internet but of the brick and mortar world, too. Just a few days ago, the hoop-de-hoo was tinged with brouhaha with the news that Amazon would start selling Kindles through Best Buy — where troubled rival Barnes & Noble had smartly been selling its Nook e-readers. That, too, seemed a part of the plan, as Amazon has consistently practiced a kind of vicious capitalism that does not see a healthy market as having sufficient oxygen for more than one player.

Then this weekend things got interesting: the company regarded by some as a 900-pound gorilla, Apple, may be selling its hotter-than-hot e-reader-and-more device, the iPad, in — yep — Amazon’s formerly exclusive domain, Target. And just like that, we are reminded: Oh, yeah, there’s another company that likes to toy with its dinner before it kills and eats it.

The speculation, which seems fairly well supported, comes from Donald Melanson in an Endgadget report. Explains Melanson:

… a tipster has sent us a few pieces of a puzzle that seem to suggest that Apple could be expanding the iPad’s retail presence into Target stores just in time for the holiday shopping season. That includes a list featuring a mysteriously unnamed product that’s set to become available on October 3rd (in six different versions, no less), and a series of images from a Target PDA (like the one pictured above) that seemingly show that the item numbers match the iPad prices exactly, and that it will be located in the Digital Audio section — that’s apparently also how e-readers like the Kindle are classified, in addition to iPods.

Says Jeff Bezos:

D’oh!