Google in the E-Book Business

Google, a name synonymous with "search engine," has thrown its hat into the ebook store ring with the likes of Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony eReaders. Investors showed their support for Google's ebook store; shares of the company raised $4.72 on the afternoon of the launching, Monday, Dec. 6, reports Daily Finance.

The real test will be whether consumers will latch onto this newest ebook store, titled simply Google eBookstore. Unlike its competition, the books available through Google can be read on the web, an Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, tablets, Barnes and Noble's Nook and Sony's eReaders. About the only place Google's ebook offerings aren't available are on Amazon's Kindle. The company is able to make its book store contents available through so many venues because their eBookstore is a Cloud service.

The front page, or front door, if you will, of the Google ebookstore offers three free books: Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," and Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations." Go ahead, let the kids say they are bored--now you've got three classics for their reading pleasure and enlightenment. Look in the upper left-hand corner of the page to get your free books.

Further down the front page--after offerings of New Arrivals, Top Rated and New York Times Bestsellers -- there is a section offering even more free ebooks, all of them classics, from "Moby Dick" to "The Writings of Mark Twain" to "The Age of Innocence."

Google is billing itself as the world's largest Internet book store. Although not all of them are yet available, the company has digitized more than 15 million publications over the last six years, reports Fortune of CNNMoney. Upon its United States opening, the eBookstore has some 3 million titles available.

On opening day and for the remainder of 2010, the search engine giant's ebooks are available for purchase in the United States, with a planned expansion to other countries in the first quarter of 2011. Along with the opening of the eBookstore on Dec. 6, Google also made apps for the iPhone, iPad, iTouch and Androids available for sale that will allow those users to access the digital bookstore, reports "The Wall Street Journal."

According the Tom Turvey, a director of strategic partnerships at Google, all of the major publishers are on board with the eBookstore, meaning site viewers will have access to a wide range of titles from which to choose. Aside from best-sellers and top-rated books, the company plans to make available scientific, scholarly and professional titles not apt to be found elsewhere, as reported by "The Wall Street Journal."

The combination of Google's well-known name, the availability of its books over multiple technologies and the wide variety of reading material that is planned to be available ought to add up to a winning business enterprise, but time will tell.

Sources: Michael Liedtke; "Google Opens E-book Store in Challenge to Amazon"; Daily Finance.
Seth Weintraub; "Google Finally Opens its eBookstore in the Cloud"; Fortune of CNNMoney.
Jeffery A. Trachtenberg and Amir Efrati; "Google Launches its E-Book Store"; The Wall Street Journal.