Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 02 June 2009 11:37
Opinion and Analysis
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Having agreed a settlement of its book digitising dispute, Google has revealed it plans to enter the e-book market before the year is out.
Google has scanned a catalogue of more than 1.5 million out of copyright books along with several million current and out of print titles as part of its goal of making all of the world's knowledge searchable.
Google e-books would not build directly on this library, but seems to be aimed at providing the infrastructure to support digital sales by the company's publisher partners.
However, it seems unlikely that the free, out of copyright titles would not be offered through the same mechanism as the commercial e-books.
True to its roots as a software company, It seems that Google will not be offering proprietary hardware along the lines of Amazon's Kindle. Instead, the company will produce software readers that run within web browsers on computers and mobile devices.
It's hard to imagine that the list wouldn't include the Android or iPhone platforms. The rumoured Apple tablet running iPhone software might also prove a popular device for such purposes.
The idea of moving into e-books also underscores Google's decision to produce its own web browser, Chrome.
According to reports, the software will allow for the local caching of content. Might this be done through Google Gears, at least on the platforms that support it?
Please
read on for more questions about Google's plans.
