With the growing popularity of Google’s Android operating system, the electronic bookstore announced by the search engine giant — increasingly branching out into other ventures — this week could give Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple a run for their money.
A Google executive announced on Tuesday that the company would begin selling e-books by this summer, with over 500,000 titles. The announcement came at a Book Industry Study Group panel at Random House’s Manhattan offices, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The paper cited Chris Palma, Google’s manager for strategic-partner development, saying that the service will be called Google Editions and will involve multiple sites and platforms.
Rather than sell downloadable books like the competition, Google Editions will be tied to its highly popular search engine, bringing up suggested book titles related to the search topic. Editions would then allow previews of the book and direct to sites where they can be sold for online reading, and cached for offline reading.
Without downloading, Google avoids sticky issues with digital rights management.
Google has enough legal problems with authors and publishers: It’s stuck in a legal battle with publishers and authors over Google Book Search, the company’s bid to digitize out of print and public domain books. Some object to the idea that they must opt out of the program, after being included by default. A Manhattan federal judge is to rule on a settlement agreement.
Google has previously said that publishers would get 63 percent of the revenue from book sales in its online book sales. Other online retailers can partner with Google, pocketing the difference between an undisclosed fee to Google and 45 percent to publishers. The price for each sale has not been disclosed.
“Presumably the Google book store will be available with a web reader and ship by default…