Google announces new e-book store, competes with Amazon
Amazon's Kindle might have some competition on its hands. Google has just announced a new e-book store called Google Editions, that will deliver books to any device with a web browser. Although Google isn't launching an e-reader device like the Kindle, it will support e-books that customers buy from stores like Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. Google Editions is slated to launch in the first half of 2010.This obviously won't hurt Amazon's e-book sales too much, but it might cut into sales of the Kindle. Why buy a really expensive device when you can read the same books on the devices you already have? From what we've seen in the past, though, Amazon is much more concerned with book sales than device sale. They did create the Kindle app for iPhone, after all. Also worth noting: Google's history with electronic versions of books isn't entirely a successful one. They're still resolving legal issues over Google Books, a project which has already scanned over 10 million books and made them searchable.
[via Mashable]
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jordan said 11:22PM on 10-26-2009
Jay,
It's probably a safe bet that Google will not manufacture a hardware reader, but a software program to read/download/share google digitized collateral is probably a good idea, but not exactly competition to Amazon. Especially not at the basic e-Pub margins. When Google launches an online store as diversified as amazon (e.g. Google Buys Barnes and Nobles) then look out.
Jordan,
http://ereader.stackexchange.com
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