Open book
After months of anticipation, Google has finally unveiled its move into the electronic book market, called simply the Google eBookstore.
In the customary blog post, Google Books product manager Abraham Murray (didn't he play Salieri in Amadeus? - Ed) said "Today is the first page in a new chapter of our mission to improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we know as books."
Over three million books have been scanned and made digitally available on Google eBooks, but you can only buy them if your live in the US right now, as Google still has to work out deals with publishers and rights-holders in the rest of the world. You can still read classics over here, which are out of copyright, and thus free.
As ever with Google, the aim of this is to drive traffic rather than generate revenue directly or sell devices, so Google is making eBooks available through web browsers, the Nook and Sony e-readers and free Android and iPhone apps. Note the conspicuous absence of Amazon's Kindle on the list of compatible devices - Amazon's model is the one most threatened by this move.
Also as you would expect, you can store your ebooks in the cloud. This should not only make your reading device-independent, but also offer unlimited storage and, in principle bookmark syncing, athough that facility was not immediately apparent. They would be accessed in this way via your Google account.
That's about it for now, there is a vid, as ever, but it's misbehaving right now, so we'll leave you with a screen. You can access Google eBooks here.
