Google eBookstore Launched

angrytuna writes "The New York Times is running an article this morning about the launch of the Google ebook store. Independent bookstores such as Powell's, based in Portland, OR, have partnered with Google in this, selling the format directly in addition to their other ebook offerings. The ebooks appear to rely on Adobe Digital Editions for DRM; instructions are provided to transfer from the 'cloud' to a handheld device. iOS and Android have a dedicated app for accessing the store, and will download for offline immediately; other clients like the Nook and Sony eReader seem to be relying on the ADE platform to manage the transfer for offline reading." NPR tried it out on a few different devices and posted their experience.

Re:No

[93 Escort Wagon]

I know that, but what I'm wondering about is at what point does Amazon admit that their format lost and add support for epub to their product. And hopefully drop .mobi as a failed file format.

When the Kindle stops dominating the market. Hard to define them as a "loser" otherwise.

Re:Conflict of Interest?

[DragonWriter]

Maybe I haven't studied this too in depth, but how is this not a conflict of interest over the stated goals of Google Books?

How is it a conflict with the goals of that project?

You know, the Google project to index books so that they were searchable?

Which did, indeed, make them searchable.

Yeah, it turns out they were indexing them to sell eBook versions.

They are only selling eBook versions of the ones that are in-copyright where the publishers allow them to sell the digital copies.

The out-of-copyright ones are not being sold, and the in-copyright ones that aren't sold through Google eBooks (and even the ones that are) provide links to purchase the book at online bookstores.

I would love it if their Library project partners sued them for it.

How have the Library partner projects been harmed by this? Why would they sue?