14 DAY TRIAL // Google has announced the first expansion of its rather low-key eBookstore, which launched in the US last year. Since then, Google has been working on getting more titles and polishing the experience, but there have been no major changes.
Now, the eBookstore is opening up in the UK, it's main touting point being that the books and the reader app itself are in the cloud meaning that they can be accessed anywhere from any device.
"We're happy to announce that we've just opened a new chapter of our Google eBookstore today. Google eBooks is now available in the United Kingdom," Kihyun Jung, Google eBooks Product Manager, announced.
"Readers in the UK now have access to the world's largest ebooks collection, with hundreds of thousands of ebooks for sale – from major UK publishers like Hachette, Random House and Penguin – as well as more than two million public domain ebooks for free," he said.
While Google's store may not have made much of a splash in the US, it may have a much better chance in the UK. The Kindle Store, which dominates ebook sales in the US, has only been around for a year or so.
Ebook sales in the UK are also significantly smaller than in the US, so the market is still up for grabs. That said, Google's biggest touting point may be its biggest weakness.
The eBookstore enables users to get their books onto any device, but the experience is far less seamless than it is on the Kindle, where the store is an integral part of the device.
In the UK, Google has no partnership with any device makers, as they do in the US. That said, anyone that is using an ebook reader other than the Kindle, will welcome the news.
"Just as in the US, we’ve designed the Google eBooks platform in the UK to be open. You can purchase, download and view Google eBooks on many devices: Android and Apple tablets and smartphones, the Google eBooks Web Reader and eReaders from Sony, Kobo, Elonex, and more," Google explained.
