Google Opens eBook Store
Google has taken the wraps off its online e-book store, throwing down the gauntlet to Apple and Amazon and offering a potential lifeline to independent booksellers.
As Apple’s iPad attempts to steal the burgeoning e-book market away from Amazon’s Kindle, search engine behemoth Google has waded into the middle of the battle between the giant of online retail and the king of the gadgets.
Rather than further complicate the e-book format war, Google has thrown its weight behind the EPUB and PDF formats used by most other online e-book stores. This means owners of E Ink-style e-book readers, such as Borders’ Kobo and the Sony Reader, will be able to buy and download books from the Google eBookstore (books .google.com/ebooks) using Adobe Digital Editions software.
iPad owners haven’t been left in the cold, as Google has released e-book software for Apple’s iGadgets as well as for smartphones and tablets running Google’s Android operating system. Google has, however, shunned Amazon’s Kindle, which doesn’t support EPUB or PDF e-books protected with Adobe’s digital rights management.
The Google eBookstore also lets customers read books from any computer via a web browser, which leaves the door open for Kindle owners to read Google-sourced e-books using the Kindle’s built-in browser. Browser-based access should also cater to a range of touchscreen tablet devices powered by BlackBerry, Windows and Linux.
Competition from Google has prompted Amazon to also offer browser-based access to its e-books from any computer, complementing its reading apps for Apple, Android and BlackBerry devices (with a Windows 7 app planned). Amazon will also follow Google’s lead and allow other websites to sell its e-books. This leaves Apple with the most restrictive platform, as its e-books can only be bought from Apple’s iBookstore and can only be read on its gadgets.
Google has struck deals with a wide range of publishers in the US. Three million titles are on offer, though more than 2.5 million are free, public-domain books by authors such as Jane Austen and Jules Verne. Unfortunately, if Australians visit the Google eBookstore, they can only choose from the public-domain titles.
While it’s easy to create a US iTunes account to shop in the US iTunes store, it’s much harder to access the US Google store from Australia. To browse books for sale, a US-based virtual private network is required to trick the service into thinking you’re in the US. Even then, it’s still not possible to buy e-books unless a US credit card is attached to your Google account.
The Google eBookstore is expected to expand internationally next year and has appointed Mark Tanner as the strategic partner development manager for Google Books in Australia.