Google Takes On Amazon With Own E-Book Store 152
CWmike writes "Google announced on Thursday that next year it's launching an online e-book store called Google Editions where users will be able to buy digital books that can be read on a range of gadgets, including e-book readers, laptops, and cell phones. Press reports out of Germany, where it was announced, note that Google plans to offer up half a million e-books from the get-go. Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said, 'The market leader, Amazon, built its position with a closed device, Kindle, which is limited to reading and buying eBooks. It will be interesting to see how well it stacks up against Google's strategy of delivering e-book capabilities via the Web to any device that can connect to the Internet. This gives Google a vastly larger addressable market than what Amazon has built up with Kindle so far.'" The price per book will be set by the publishers, Google says. Google willl turn over 45% of what they take in to the publisher and "the vast majority" of the rest to retailers.
Re:The format is all that matters (Score:3, Informative)
As long as the books they sell are readable on any device they win in my book.
From the article:
The books bought from Google, and its partners, would be accessible on any gadget that has a Web browser, including smartphones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops. A book would be accessible offline after the first time it was accessed.
I believe the Kindle has an experimental web browser ... although why pay the premium if Google can offer what Amazon offers? Being a netbook user (and enjoying 7 hours of battery life) I'm very interested in this. My netbook was maybe $75 more than the Kindle.
Re:what does browser based mean? (Score:5, Informative)
obvious questions: if it is browser based, can one read the book without being online? Can one download the book temporarily or for good? Are records kept from where and how long a reader reads a book and what kind of books are read? Will this be tied to your online profile and get you reader specific ads?
From the article:
The books bought from Google, and its partners, would be accessible on any gadget that has a Web browser, including smartphones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops. A book would be accessible offline after the first time it was accessed.
There's an awful lot of questions and assumptions being asked about this device that are answered quite clearly in the article. I don't think anything about 'reader ads' are ads while reading was included in this. You'd be paying money for these books (just like with Amazon's Kindle), no ad supported revenue.
Re:Why are they paying retailers? (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't read the article yet, but either the summary is way off, misleading, or it just doesn't make sense!
I guess TFS could be considered misleading if you believed that it was claiming to completely explain Google's plan. Or maybe, TFS was just incomplete (as summaries tend to be). From TFA:
"Google Editions allows retail partners to sell their books, especially those who haven't invested in a digital platform," he said. "We expect the majority (of customers) will go to retail partners not to Google. We are a wholesaler, a book distributor."
Re:Why are they paying retailers? (Score:5, Informative)
"Google Editions allows retail partners to sell their books, especially those who haven't invested in a digital platform," he said. "We expect the majority (of customers) will go to retail partners not to Google. We are a wholesaler, a book distributor."
Re:Why are they paying retailers? (Score:3, Informative)
Google isn't creating a bookstore, they are creating a backend for bookstores to use.
In otherwords they hope to have you walk into a Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, or whatever brick and motar stores are still out there in the era of Amazon.com, and/or visit these company's websites, and purchase a "Google Editions" version of the book as opposed to having their own dedicated webfront like Amazon does.
Man the above sentence is tourtured grammer, but I can't make it come out any better.