Google is planning to launch an online bookstore in early 2010. The service will be known as Google Editions and will feature more than 50,000 editions from a number of leading publishers. Users will be able to read the books directly in the browser without requiring an eReader. This will likely affect the eReader market.

Google Editions is different from Google Book Search. The latter is Google’s initiative to scan all the books and make them available online in a digital format. Google was involved in a legal dispute over Google Book Search. A settlement was proposed recently, however, nothing has turned up till date. Both the sides are back to the board to chalk out a solution to the problem.

Google Editions is a direct competitor to Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Google will be able to leverage on its existing userbase and advertisement capabilities to easily take the lead in this area also. Google plans to share the revenue earned from the service with the publishers. For every sale made through Google Editions, the publisher will get 63 per cent while Google will get the rest.

In the recent months, Amazon’s Kindle eReader saw a surge in popularity forcing rivals such as Sony, Barnes & Noble and ASUS to launch similar eReaders to tap the market. However, Google has taken a different approach and has kept this service browser-centric just like all of its other services. It needs to be seen how Google’s new service works out.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 4:30 am and is filed under Internet Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.