Sony with Google to thwart Amazon
December 4, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under Technology News
Seeking to challenge the online retailer Amazon. com in the growing digital books market, Sony Electronics teamed up with the internet-search giant Google Inc., on Wednesday. Sony announced that it has got into a deal with Google that will make a half million copyright-free books available for its ebook Reader device, the main competitor of the Amazon Kindle.
In a statement, Steve Haber, president of the digital reading business division of Sony Electronics, said, “We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible, and our partnership with Google is another step in that direction. We would love to continue working with Google to see how we can get more content for Reader owners.”
Sony stated that its deal with Google will help fetching over a half a million classic titles free to users of its ebook Reader device, a hand-held device that helps to read books and newspapers. Sony claimed that the deal will lift up the number of titles available its eBook Library to more than 600,000. However, neither Sony nor Google disclosed the financial terms of the deal.
Google, on the other side, has been working to encode books in a free, open electronic publishing format, ePub, to make them easier to read on devices like Sony’s Reader. It is looking to enhance the number of copyright-free books in the Google Book Search catalog available to Sony and any other e-book distributor. Last month, Google announced to make its collection easily accessible to mobile devices such as the iPhone.
Google is also looking to its collection of public domain books widely available. The public domain books are not owned or controlled by anyone; they are not protected by copyright. Several Shakespearean classics, Jane Austin’s “Persuasion” or Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” are public domain books.
Sony claimed that the users of its Reader will now be able to read the Google books on their devices, or download a PDF file to read on a computer. Sony markets two versions of its Reader that is the chief rival of Amazon’s Kindle.
Analysts feel that Sony’s partnership with Google will give big boost to Sony’s ebook store, against Amazon that has 250,000 books in its Kindle library; the deal will decelerate the momentum of Amazon’s Kindle. However, Amazon declined to comment on the Sony-Google deal.
Sony with Google to thwart Amazon was first posted on March 19, 2009 at 10:58 pm.
