Google Announces Bookstore Grand Opening for Summer 2010
Those of you who have been following the lawsuits and other intrigues with eager anticipation may not be waiting much longer for the big payoff; Google has just announced that it will begin offering digital books for sale as early as June this year.
Google’s new service will be called Google Editions, and according to Google reps, it’s not going to be the same old e-book store that readers may have gotten used to over the last few years (or was that months?).
The main selling point? Non-proprietary formats – and, apparently, no DRM either. Unlike Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle before it, Google Edition’s books will be available from a variety of sources and accessible using a variety of e-reading devices. What’s more is that Google plans to allow small independent book stores to sell its titles while allowing the stores to keep most of the profits, a move that Evan Schnittman, VP of global business development for Oxford University Press, said “tears down barriers” by permitting even small shops to offer their customers a wide selection of titles.
So will this mark the beginning of the end of proprietary e-book formats and DRM? It’s possible. Google has been at work digitizing books into the freely available public domain ePub format for years now, so they’re certainly in a position to compete with the current e-book bosses in terms of inventory. And consumers tend to appreciate things like choice (like, say, not being locked into one format per e-reading device); given a little they may just demand more.
Read the full article from The Wall Street Journal »
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