Google eBooks Now Has Over 3 Million Free Books

Google Books isn't lacking in setbacks or detractors, but the company is pushing forward with it and its relatively new and related project, the eBookstore. Now, six months after launching the ebook store, Google is providing an update on how it's been doing.

"It’s been about six months since we launched Google eBooks. Now, we’re happy to report there are more than three million free Google eBooks available in the U.S. for your enjoyment and enlightenment (as compared to more than two million at launch)," Abe Murray, product manager at Google, wrote.

"You can read them in the free Google Books Web Reader, through a free Google Books app, or by downloading them to your favorite compatible ereader," he explained.

While the eBookstore is, well, a store, offering a compelling array of titles, there are also plenty of free books as well, most of them scanned by Google for the Books project.

In fact, there are now over three million books offered for free. And, unlike with most competing book stores, you can access your files on almost any device via the web or dedicated apps. You can also download the books in a format compatible with popular ereaders like the Nook or Sony Reader.

The apps for Android, iOS and the Chrome browser have been downloaded a total of 2.5 million times already.

Newer titles have also become more numerous on the site, there are now 7,000 publishers working with Google to have their works available in the store, up from 5,000 at launch six month ago.

Google is also working with smaller booksellers, now 250 of them, to offer the eBookstore books via their sites or physical locations.

Still, Google has a lot more work ahead of it if it wants to make even the slightest dents into the market share of existing players, notably Amazon which is now selling more ebooks than physical copies.