Google Editions to Launch this Summer

Google is set to launch its own e-book service this summer.

Chris Palma, Google’s Manager for Strategic Partner Development Chris Palma has told the Wall Street Journal that Google Editions will launch in June or July of this year. The service will provide digital editions of books, similarly to Apple’s iBooks or Amazon’s Kindle. The books will be downloaded via your web browser and it is assumed that the format will not be restricted to a single platform. As many as 500,000 books may be carried in Google Editions , from partners that reached a mutual settlement with Google.

These settlements occurred after a legal challenge put to Google by authors, publishers and photographers, claiming that the Google Books search engine, previously named Google Print and Google Book Search, breached copyrights. The challenge was settled in 2008, with copyright holders being given control over how their work appears on Google Books and paid accordingly for any sales that occurred as the result of online access through Google Books.

At the same time, Google co-founder Sergey Brin aimed to clarity the thinking behind Google Books. In a nutshell, it was concerned with preserving human knowledge and ensuring that it is preserved, referring to the floods that destroyed parts of Stanford Library and the destruction of the library in Alexandria. While this is true and an admirable aim, there is no escaping that there is also a financial benefit to Google and that Google Editions will be in direct competition with iBooks and Kindle. This may well be the start of another barrage of criticism, especially as Amazon is part of an Internet Archive coalition that issued a legal challenge against Google Books on antitrust and privacy grounds. This particular challenge is yet to be resolved and is by no means the first registration of concern about Google privacy controls .

However, it would appear that Google has learnt from the previous controversy about its book search engine, as publishers must submit a book to Google Editions , it will not simply be picked up. This “opt-in” system may be an indication that great care is being taken to ensure that this new Google feature cannot fall foul of copyright laws.

Will Google Editions be able to compete with iBooks and Kindle or will previous controversy doom it to failure?

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