Internet search engine giant Google have their fingers in a lot of pies and later on this year they’re going to be dipping into the ebook market with their own online ebook store the company announced yesterday.
Google like to spread their stuff to as wide an audience as possible so their bookstore won’t be linked to a particular gadget in the way that Amazon and Apple has done.
“It is a different approach to what most readers today have and the vision is to be able to access books in a device agnostic way,” said Google spokesperson Gabriel Sticker.
Google Editions, as their new service will be called, will enable users to read books via a web browser and not just through the Kindle or another eReader which means we can read the books on any gadget we want.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google may decide in the future to build software to optimise reading on devices such as the iPhone or iPad.
They also report that book retailers could sell Google Editions via their own website and share the revenue with Google although the retailers will keep most of it.
Google currently has over 12 million books scanned and therefore has a massive collection to browse through.
So what does this mean for the likes of the Amazon Kindle or the Nook or even the iPad as people won’t need to buy a separate device to read the eBooks and this could negatively impact their sales.
Mr Whit Andrews, a senior vice president of research for Gartner told the BBC that “No company or industry can see this Google entry as trivial. Anytime Google goes into business in your bailiwick you had better be ready for a fierce battle”.
According to Credit Suisse, any negative impact that Google Editions might have on Amazon will be softened by a rise in ebook sales anyway over the next few years.
At the moment we don’t know how Google plan to price books through Google Editions and we don’t have an exact date for the launch.
Google have also had major legal hassles about putting millions of out of print books online and a ruling is expected soon but whatever is decided it won’t affect Google Editions.
“Plans for Google Editions will happen independent of whatever the settlement agreement is” Stricker told the BBC.
