14 DAY TRIAL // Google is sticking behind the Books project even though it's one of its most controversial products. Criticized by its competitors and under scrutiny by the US Department of Justice, the search giant is plowing ahead announcing a new partnership with Sony, which will allow users of the company's Reader to access over 500,000 more free digital copies of works either out of copyright or in the public domain. This brings the number of free books provided by Google to Sony's eBook Store to a nice, round 1 million.
“We are committed to ensuring our customers have the freedom to discover and read content from the widest possible range of sources,” said Chris Smythe, director of the eBook Store from Sony. “We’re proud to offer access to the broadest range of eBooks today – from hot new releases, to New York Times Best Sellers, to classics and hard to find manuscripts such as those available for free from Google.”
Sony may not be an established player in the e-book market but it is a serious contender and was in fact first to the market with the launch of its e-book Reader. Since then, though, Amazon has become the dominant force, really driving e-books into the mainstream. But, with the new addition, Sony has now the largest catalogue of the three main contenders.
Amazon's store only boasts 300,000 free titles from the Guttenberg Project but it doesn't support the ePub format that Google uses. The newly announced e-book store from Barnes & Noble will launch with 500,000 free titles also coming from Google and will add more along the way.
While the e-book market may be flourishing, it is still in its infancy so problems can and do arise, like the recent Amazon scandal when the company removed some books that its users had bought and downloaded from their devices after it was revealed that the company that initially sold them didn't have the rights to do so. The company has since appologized for the incident and promised it wouldn't happen again.
Meanwhile, Google Books continues to scan and release millions of titles, commercial, out of print or public domain ones, even after it encountered several difficulties along the way. A settlement with book publishers and authors has allowed the company to scan and provide access to a large number of books and publications for which the proper copyright holders can't be determined. That settlement has been very controversial and is still being reviewed by the US courts, with a DOJ report on the issue coming next month.