Google's eBookstore

Google announced Google eBooks and Google eBookstore on Monday, launching a long-anticipated cloud-based system to allow readers to buy e-books online from a choice of booksellers and to read them with a variety of devices.

Google's launch is essentially a cannonball into the e-book waters, promising to splash out all the water where e-book sellers Amazon and Apple now swim.

Google eBooks (previously code-named Google Editions) will be available through the new online Google eBookstore at Books.google.com, where readers in the U.S. can now purchase "hundreds of thousands" of titles and browse more than more than 3 million titles, said Abraham Murray, product manager of Google Books.

Until today, only searching and browsing were possible. The eBookstore will be activated for international users early next year.



Users will be able to use laptops, netbooks, tablets, smartphones and most e-readers (with the Kindle from Amazon a notable exception) to buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud, Murray said.

Readers will access their e-books like messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa, using a free password-protected Google account that comes with unlimited e-book storage.

They will be able to purchase them from the Google eBookstore or from independent bookseller partners as well, Murray said.

As part of the Google eBooks announcement, Adobe Systems announced that its Content Server 4 software will provide digital rights management for the new system. Up to 85 devices across many platforms supporting Adobe eBook digital rights management (DRM) will be able to access Google eBooks, using PDF and ePub formats. The Adobe software is a part of the Google eBooks system being used by more than 200 book publishers and sellers.

Article By Matt Hamblen adopted from http://www.computerworld.com