Google Inc transformed its status from digital librarian to merchant. Sources say that it is reall challenge for Amazone.com Inc.
This has been a long-awaited Internet book store, which opened Monday on 6th December 2010 in the U.S., draws upon a portion of the 15 million printed books that Google has scanned into its computers during the past six years. About 4,000 publishers, including CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster Inc., Random House Inc. and Pearson PLC’s Penguin Group, are also allowing Google to carry many of their recently released books in the new store. This deal will lead will results the availability the current best sellers among the 3 million e-books.
The settlement of $125 million has been under review for more than two years. Google Inc has a tough challenge from its rivals, consumer watchdogs, academic experts, literary agents and even foreign governments, which worry that Google, would get too much power to control prices in the still-nascent market for electronic books.
Readers can buy books from the Google’s store and can be read on any machine with a browser. There are also free applications that can be installed on Apple Inc.’s iPad and iPhone, as well as other devices powered by Google’s own mobile operating system, Android. But Google’s eBooks can’t be loaded on to the Kindle.
It is expected that Electronic books would generate nearly $1 billion in U.S. sales this year and climb to $1.7 billion by 2012 as more people buy electronic readers and computer tablets such as the iPad, according to Forrester Research. The research group expects a total of 15 million e-readers and tablets to have been sold in the U.S. by the end of the year.
According to the sources, Google’s e-books will work on the Nook, Sony Corp.’s Reader devices and practically every other e-reading device except the Kindle. Google achieves this with the help of Adobe Inc.’s copy-protection system for e-books. That system is already used by public libraries and smaller online bookstores, but hasn’t seen much interest from the major players. Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Apple all have their own copy-protection systems. The growing embrace of digital sales by the publishing industry is expected to result in the closure of hundreds more book stores during the next few years, adding to a media mortuary of music and video merchants killed by electronic distribution.
There is a concern that it will exploit the dominance of its Internet search engine to spur e-book sales on its own site, Google plans to include links to several other places where people can buy a book mentioned in a search request. And when visitors come to the book section on Google’s website, they will be asked if they are interested in buying or just doing general research.
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