Google, a corporate name synonymous with open source and free, is planning an old-fashioned standards war with online retailer Amazon. Amazon would like to lock people into its e-reader and its selection of e-books. Currently a reader of Amazon’s e-books can only do so on Amazon’s Kindle or the Kindle iPhone app. But that may soon change. Google has announced that by the end of the year, it plans to allow publishers to sell electronic versions of their books through the same tools they now use to submit books for Google’s search engine. The move will pit it directly against Amazon and the Kindle reader (although it may be possible to jigger an e-book downloaded from Google so that it can be read on a Kindle).
The critical piece of the news is that Google will pressure its partner publishers to make their books available for purchase from any Web-enabled device. Publisher’s will also be allowed to set the price for their e-books — whereas Amazon sells only fixed-priced books for Kindle. Any smartphone, or specialty reader like the Sony Reader, that can access Google, should be able to download Google’s e-books.
How many users will want to use an all-pupose device for reading a book remains to be seen. Book lovers say that electronic devices which are big enough for movies are too small to read print for an extended period of time. Interestingly, Amazon announced today that it now plans to launch its large-screen Kindle DX e-reader on June 10, which is earlier than it had originally planned.
According to PC World, Google’s move could stall the budding e-book market by creating a Blue-Ray-versus-HD-DVD-like war. People will not be able to get reader devices from Google, but if they choose one that supports Google’s e-books they are not locked into the device. However, it may be possible to read Kindle books on these new devices, whenever they exist, by downloading and then e-mailing them or otherwise transferring them.
Given Google’s entrance into e-readers, its entrance into mobile phones with Android and the first signs of an Android netbook market, the upcoming holiday season will be an interesting one for open-source gadget lovers.
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