Starting June or July, the next time you use Google Books search and discover titles that you are interested to buy, you may soon do so right there and then on the Google Book search results page. By then Google will have launched its new service, Google Editions which is actually Google’s take on electronic book distribution.
Sounds familiar? Yes, this is Google’s take on similar services provided by Amazon’s Kindle BookStore, Apple’s iBookstore and Barnes and Noble’s Nook ebookstore.
But then WallStreet Journal tells us:
Google has been discussing its vision for distributing books online for several years and for months has been evangelizing its new service, called Google Editions. The company is hoping to distinguish it from offerings from incumbents like Amazon by allowing users to access books from a broad range of websites using a broad array of devices. Amazon.com’s digital book business is largely focused on its Kindle e-reader and Kindle software that runs on some other select hardware.
So, Google’s electronic book distribution service is more of a web-based service rather than specific to a mobile portable device. But of course, this could just be a sampler since we all know that Google is prepping up its Chrome OS which shall run on various netbook devices and possibly perhaps on a tablet PC similar to the iPad or an ebook reader similar to the Kindle.
It’s pretty interesting to note that while other ebook distribution service is banking on specific devices to succeed, Google is mainly banking on Google Edition’s search capability to determine whether its venture into the electronic book distribution service will prosper or not.
And of course, let us not forget that Google is still facing some scrutiny from those who oppose its Google Books Project and Google Editions might just add to the issues being hurled against them.
