Google, publishers eyeing downloadable book service
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jan 22, 2007 at 11:17am
Google and some of the world’s top publishers are working on plans that they hope could do for books what the iPod has done for music, according to the Times Online.
Google is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry. Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, told the Times Online that he didn’t believe taking books online would mean the end of the printed word but it would give readers more options when it came to buying.
He added that after many years of setbacks the electronic book looked poised to go main-stream. Commuters in Japan are reading entire novels on their mobile phones, per the Times Online. And Sony recently launched its Reader, a digital book device with an online book store stocking 10,000 titles. Amazon, the world’s largest online book seller, is also planning to launch an e-book service.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
