The whole Google Editions news has been interesting. Especially since most of the Google value proposition is hard to explain in concrete terms -
- What value do you place on Open?
- Does a customer care that Google is sharing with everyone – letting everyone get a piece of the pie?
- Books in the Cloud – do they not get wet when it rains?
- Buy anywhere, read anywhere? Read in your browser? People do not really read on their PCs and in their Browsers. We have had a decade of trying that out.
The one very concrete nugget in there is the 500 thousand books google says they will release with. Why? Because, so far -
Amazon has never been threatened on range of titles available
Think about it.
- Amazon, with its 350 thousand plus books has had little real competition on book availability.
- Sony and Barnes and Noble have a measly 100 thousand books.
- New start-ups are even more hampered – Txtr has just 20K at launch.
It’s been such a disadvantage that BN and Sony have been reduced to cheating - including free Google Public Domain Books and claiming more than a million books (if a million are free books from Google all you are left with is the more than 
).
It’s hard to get people to choose an eReader other than the Kindle when the Kindle Store has so many more books available.
That will change when Google offers its books to every non-Kindle eReader.
500 thousand Books is the biggest threat from Google
If Google starts with 500K books it’ll be close to where Amazon probably will be at that point of time.
- It will be the first time an ebook source has a range of titles comparable to the Kindle.
- Kindle Store will have a real competitor for the first time. A competitor willing to discount books, use advertising income and other innovations to cut prices (and profitability).
- Every eReader will suddenly have a wide range of titles available – with regards from Google.
The biggest threat to Amazon from Google Editions is not DRM or openness or any other intangible. It’s a simple concrete number – 500 thousand books.
Google has had numerous ‘How big is your search index?’ contests with Yahoo.
It knows the advantage that having the most books would give it – the psychological effect on readers’ minds.
The fact that it will debut the store with 500 thousand books indicates that it intends to match or exceed Amazon on range of books.
Google is attacking Amazon in an area no other competitor has been able to. For all the talk of openness and cloud computing, the Google Editions feature that customers really warm up to is probably going to be the range of books.
Filed under: kindle Tagged: | amazon vs google, kindle vs google editions
Very true.
And now inmagine that you take the ‘Amazon Recommends’ feature and apply it to every search you do – not just when you are looking to buy a book directly (that too) but on each and every subject you are interested in. That could be very powerful.
To clarify my last post which could sound as though I am referencing Amazon… I meant of course that Google could apply an Amazon-like feature on its search engine to target specific books. The company then makes money on every turn.
This is where ‘open’ will benefit Google and perhaps the consumer. Search the net on a subject and, instead, find a Google Book at a reasonable price. Hit the ‘buy’ button to be (seconds later) reading an authorative work on your area of interest or a related novel rather than spending hours trawling through dross.
Still confused is why reading on a browser is considered a threat. Now if Google lets you download to read when ‘offline’, then maybe. But the Kindle has the browser as well. Perhaps I don’t understand the tech, but if web browser book reading was so compelling, then wouldn’t it have taken off before this? And also, if it IS browser reading how/why is the Kindle excluded?
The million plus books in the public domain and in e-Pub format available from Google are all easily convertible to be read on the Kindle. If Google sells books in DRM free format, they also will be readable on Kindle.
If publishers ever wake up to the realization that they can sell a lot more books if people could just use them, meaning DRM free, then those publishers would gain more from the extra sales than they lose from piracy. Take BaenBooks as an example of that.
I really don’t understand B&N’s rationale in preventing Kindle and Sony owners from buying their books. I thought they used to be a book store.
So, I’ve looked at Google Books a few times. If they’re referring to the “free” books that they have, I don’t understand why this is a threat. Yes, they have a *very* wide selection of free books, but if you look through those, it’s pretty much project gutenberg + a bunch of EXTREMELY obscure books.
Now, if they’re referring to non-free books, then what format are those books going to be downloadable in? If they’re not downloadable, then they’re not going to play nicely offline (or on any non-cell-enabled ebook reader). If the are downloadable, then they’re either DRM’d (and won’t work on every reader), or non-DRM’d (in which case they can be converted for kindle). I don’t see why this is a threat…
Thanks for the comments.
Think the 500K refers to new books – otherwise the number would be a million something.
Paul, the Google Recommends feature you talk about is EXACTLY what Google will do. The first search result will be a book listing and a discount offer.
Finally, the reason Google Editions are a threat is -
1) If they are not available on the Kindle, then they balance out Kindle’s advantage in range of titles.
2) If they are, then Amazon risks losing its revenue stream from books.
Say sometime in 2010 or 2011 there are 10 million Kindle Owners spending an average of $10 per month. That’s a billion dollar revenue stream. Why would Amazon want to share it with Google?
Unless I’m misunderstanding something, Google Editions books will only be readable on web-enabled devices. That makes the Kindle seem even more attractive. Sure, the Kindle has a browser, but I really don’t want to use the battery-draining, not-always-available Whispernet (think airplanes or rural towns) just to read a book
I’m with Jesslyn, Al, TuxGirl, and Mark. I just don’t see it. The last place I want to read a book is on a web browser and especially not on an LCD screen.
If anything, it might train people looking for lowest price and a Google deal to look twice at the Kindle and other e-readers so they don’t have to read online with such discomfort, and I’m talking linear reading of words only. That’s when you really feel the light from the LCD screen making your eyes squint.
Buying a book through the browser does not limit you to reading it in one. Google proposes that a local copy will be kept on your device and can also be accessed from the cloud at any time. Next year, there will be a rapid evolution of the ereader with Apple and Android as well as a slew of companies using open systems batting against Amazon. It is within this environment we should be looking at Google’s play, not the one we currently enjoy.
Add into the mix new technologies such as wifi Direct and it is easy to imagine a seamless buying experience that will equal Amazon’s but will range over a wider spectrum of competitors and devices.