Google eBookseller: Don't be evil.

[mckitterick]

Today, the Google eBookstore makes its bow. They're working with 9000 publishers big and small, and they let publishers choose the price - starting at $9.99/book.

Here's a good analysis of what Google's up to.

They use a cloud-computing model, so you don't need to store your books on your device. Their books will run on every e-device except the Kindle, which I find interesting: Is this Amazon fighting Google or Google trying to crush Amazon?

Google comes into bookselling with a few huge advantages: They own massive mountains of data about everyone who uses the internet, and they have been scanning and sharing books for years now in a way that looks very much like piracy, but they have the money to successfully fight legal challenges. So they own massive mountains of ebooks ready to give you for free. Clearly they've been preparing for this for years, despite their denials during the legal challenges to their book-scanning efforts.

The NPR commentator this morning says that ebooks will be 85% of all book sales in 10 years. Google wants a piece of that pie!

Chris

Comments

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

I was a bit annoyed with the NPR report because the commentator made a statement about being able to read Google's ebooks on any computer that had access to the web. This implies that you can't do that with other ebooks which is obviously false. Sigh, NPR, you have disappointed me yet again.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a pretty important and standard feature of an e-reader. A simple clarification would have been, "...as with other e-readers."

[skaldic.livejournal.com]

Unless I'm reading their page wrong, they offer PDFs, which are readable by the Kindle, so it's still usable for Kindle owners...

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Just repeating what NPR reported!

[skaldic.livejournal.com]

well, hopefully it's not just wishful thinking on my part, since I'm pretty sure I'm getting a kindle at hexmas...

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

It's Adobe Digital Editions, which I believe is actually a DRM standard for ePub/PDF, and something Kindle doesn't support.

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for a Notion Ink Adam, so I can download apps that will read Kindle/Nook/Kobo/Google or whatever other format they want to throw at it.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I see! Frak this whole DRM thing. Why of all businesses would Google impose DRM? I mean, seriously Google folks, you've been snatching books for years, and now you're DRMing stuff? Hm.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

That's pretty. Is it e-ink? Can't find how many page-flips it lasts. That's what I'll be buying, not some glowing-display energy hog.

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

It's Pixel Qi last I heard, which is a low energy LCD technology. It still displays color, but doesn't eat juice like an iPad.

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

I was pretty surprised to see the world's biggest open source company embrace the DRM, too. I guess that was the bargain with the devil they had to make in order to get any publishers on board with their estore.

Reading the fine print, publishers can specify how many devices can download the books and how many concurrent readers a book can have. Screw that. I have a lot of devices, and I use them legitimately. It pisses me off when I run into the concurrent users limit, because dammit, I've gone out of my way to give you my money for an item freely available through pirate channels.

[ryltar.livejournal.com]

When they say any e-device, I wonder if they include webOS, blackberry, etc devices...