Posted March 17, 2006.

Google Becomes a Bookseller

Search-engine company Google announced March 10 that it was partnering with publishers in the United States and Britain to sell online access to full copies of their books. Google Book Search will allow publishers to set the price for their books, which users would find through the search engine and “preview a limited number of pages to determine whether they’ve found what they’re looking for,” the Google website explained.

Books purchased in this fashion would not be downloadable and could only be viewed in a web browser.

“We are collaborating with publishers—in response to demand from them,” Google spokeswoman Megan Lamb said in the March 13 San Jose Mercury News, “to develop a suite of online tools that will enable publishers to experiment with new and innovative ways to generate more book revenue.”

Other web organizations, including the noncommercial Open Content Alliance, are working on similar efforts to offer digital books that are downloadable. OCA cofounder Brewster Kahle wondered whether people would be satisfied reading entire books in a browser. “Maybe Google as an e-book publisher will be successful,” he told the Mercury News. “I think there’s room for many different business models.”

Posted March 17, 2006.