Google eBooks: E-Reading Takes To The Cloud

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/06/google-ebooks-e-reading-takes-to-the-cloud/

by davidedicillo • 16 years ago

25 13 16 years ago

techcrunch.com

hexis• 16 years ago

Direct link to the ebooks - http://books.google.com/ebooks

trotsky• 16 years ago

Google taking 48 cents on the dollar unless you're a major publisher... ouch!

gcb3• 16 years ago

Every google app is above 1.5mb. That's really above the fold for most categories of apps

keltex• 16 years ago

The first book I see (Cross Fire by James Patterson) is $14.99 vs. $12.99 on the Kindle.

gcb3• 16 years ago

Differently from kindle and other ebook apps, such as adilko, google goes great lenghts, at least in this version, to hide the free content besides the 3 samples that it adds to your lib when starting

gcb3• 16 years ago

let me correct myselft on this one. in the website they have a category for "top free books". but otherwise, still a pain

how about some project guttenberg in the app search results? c'mon, you guys are an overgrow search engine :)

tmcw• 16 years ago

"E-Reading Takes To The Cloud"

Sorry, what?

How is this any more cloud-y than a Kindle, or whatever also-ran B&N has, or the iTunes books thing? Not to say that it isn't cool (personally, I'm surprised it uses Adobe's eBook DRM format instead of something simpler and more open), but the cloudiness of this is far less notable than the weird fact that Google's getting into this industry.

pak• 16 years ago

Hasn't Google been producing some very Microsoft-esque news as of late--they join some product space late, with a product that doesn't really differentiate itself except by having Google scale from the beginning? I'm just seeing this as a increasingly frequent thing: Checkout, the Android Market, Buzz, Google TV, HotPot, and now this... can't wait for Google Me or "the Facebook retort" to come out and be completely underwhelming.

It seems at a certain point a large company cannot help but be more reactionary than revolutionary, despite the culture and mantras and everything else.

revorad• 16 years ago

I'm really pleased to see this particular product from Google though. Not offering ebooks is weird for a company whose mission is organising the world's information.

jonknee• 16 years ago

They're not entirely new to this space--they started Google Books back in 2004.

RaRic• 16 years ago

The first book I searched for (Guns, Germs and Steel) shows up in the auto suggest, but not in the search results. Disappointing.

elblanco• 16 years ago

So.... downside: books are more expensive, no support for the Kindle, "yet another eReader"(TM) for all my devices, minimal support for common formats, blah blah

upside: it syncs where you are between all your devices!

am I missing something here?

robk• 16 years ago

The attractiveness here is not the store, IMO, but the eReader access to their deep back catalog of books they've scanned. Amazon and B&N keep their catalogs full of paid content. Google's seems like it will have a great depth of their own proprietary scanned material, which is appealing.

Google eBooks: E-Reading Takes To The Cloud

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