San Francisco — Google Inc. on Monday made it official that by the end of the year it plans to intoroduce a service that would allow publishers to sell online digital versions of their books directly to consumers — whether they possess a specialized e-book reader or not, a move that would push the Internet search titan in direct competition with e-commerce leader Amazon.com Inc.
Mountain View, Calif., based Google said it plans to create a “digital book ecosystem” that would empower its partner publishers to make their titles available for purchase from any web-enabled device, whether it is a PC, a smart phone, a netbook or a dedicated reading device, the company said.
The move is also part of a Google’s strategy to promote an open platform for reading and accessing books and seems to target Amazon.com’s Kindle and Sony Corp.’s Reader, Google said in a statement.
“Eventually, we hope to extend this functionality to retailers who embed Google Previews on their website,” Google said.
The service is expected to be introduced by the end of this year, Google spokesperson Gabriel Stricker, said in a statement.
The news spreaded from the annual BookExpo convention in New York, during which Google seemingly announced its intent to allow publishers to sell digital books to consumers online.
The announcement instantly triggere discussion of Google targeting e-books kingpin Amazon.com and its Kindle reader, but it is too early to surmise what impact the competing service might have on e-book sales, which currently account for between 1 percent and 3 percent of book sales, according to Michael Norris, senior analyst with market research firm Simba Information.
E-books downloaded from Amazon.com’s Kindle Store at present can only be accessed and read either by its own reader Kindle, and Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch running Kindle software or Sony Corp.’s Reader.
Recently Amazon.com introduced a new version of its Kindle reader. The new “Kindle DX,” which has a larger screen, and is designed to better present newspaper and magazine content than earlier versions. The online retailer also said last month it launched a Kindle Store optimized for the Safari web browser on the iPhone. The store has 280,000 e-books for sale.
Evidently, Google is targeting for a huge rival, Amazon.com. The retailer posted revenues of $4.9 billion and a net income of $177 million for the first quarter of this year. Media sales, which includes books, movies and music accounted for $2.7 billion.
U.S. readers spent $24 billion on books in 2008, according to the American Association of Publishers.
Nevertheless, Google could turn out to be a successful challenger for Amazon, except for a major difference would be that the search giants’ ultimate goal is to allow Google Book Search users “buy access” to copyrighted books with any Web-enabled computer, e-reader or mobile phone.
Google spokesman Stricker said consumers would not be able to download books in the same way Amazon’s customers can buy copies of specific titles and store them on their Kindle. Instead, people who access books through Google would be able to read titles online and temporarily cache them in their Internet browsers so they could also read them offline.
A consumer purchasing access to a book through Google Book Search would have the lasting right to view the title, a source familiar with the matter said. It was not immediately clear whether consumers would be willing to pay for a book they could not download and store on their computer, phone or e-reader.
Amazon.com currently sells most bestsellers for $9.99 in ebook form. Google said that it will allow sellers to set their own prices, which would indicate that Google’s service could put pressure on ebook pricing.
Google said it is still in discussion with publishers and specific details of is project remain to be determined.