Google Working To Make 'iPod/iTunes for Books'

nettamere writes to mention an initiative by Google to take the library online. The end result of the Google Book Search, the company hopes to see a future where they are not merely referring customers to Amazon, but instead offering them the ability to download books directly. According to the Times Online, Google hopes to 'do for books what the iPod did for music.' From the article: "One of Google's partners, Evan Schnittman of Oxford University Press, said he foresaw a number of categories becoming popular downloads: 'Do you really want to go on holiday carrying four novels and a guide book?' The book initiative would be part of Google's Book Search service and its partnership with publishers, which will make books searchable online with publishers' approval. At present, only a sample of each book is available online."

Comments

Guide books?

[ChePibe]

'Do you really want to go on holiday carrying four novels and a guide book?'

Yes, I'd much rather have a guide book in my hand that screams "I'm not from here" than a digital version that could run out of batteries leaving me stranded and lost or, worse yet, the look of "I'm not from here" (generally obvious for tourists, anyways) and focusing all of my attention on an expensive looking toy, which is likely to draw in more problems.

I'll take a good old guide book any day, thanks. The novels, however, we can talk about.

I call bullshit!

[tomhudson]

From the summary:

Do you really want to go on holiday carrying four novels and a guide book

I'd rather have a book and not have to worry about internet connectivity, worrying about dropping a laptop or other reader into the bathtub or a pool or a sidewalk, battery life, rain, leaving it behind at a restaurant, getting it stolen, and "sorry, you can't take that in here".

Books "just work" - and if you lose it, you only have the cost of a paperback.

And no, I don't want to read a book on my cellphone, either, even though I watch 3gp ripped episodes of The Simpsons on it when I have to kill some time.

hardware is the problem

[Jett]

Until there is decent hardware to read books on, projects like this aren't going anywhere beyond niche markets.

I love books, I own a few thousand of them and buy new ones every few months. I don't own a single ebook and I doubt I ever will because I've yet to see an ebook reader that was superior to an actual book. The only benefit to ebook readers over physical books are portability and storage capacity. The problem with this is that neither of these are big problems with physical books - if I'm going on a long trip it's not a big deal to bring even a few full sized hardbacks along to read. I don't need to have a library of books on my person at any time, the most books I've ever needed to bring with me anywhere at one time (since high school) was 4, and that was to read on a flight to the other side of the planet. I don't often fly to the other side of the planet.

Bad article

[IamTheRealMike]

Ever notice that whenever you read an article in the newspapers about something you know about, it's always riddled with errors? This article made me think of that. In my not so humble opinion, this is just a really, really bad piece of writing. Where do we even start?

Furthermore, since Google is acquiring copyright material at no cost, it seems to be treating books quite differently from all other media. It is prepared to pay for video and music, but not, apparently, for books. The Google defence is that their Book Search system is covered by the legal concept of "fair dealing".

I guess he means fair use, not fair dealing. I'm not sure why he thinks Google is paying for music. This is news to me ...

But the second thing to be said is that I could read whole passages of my books of which I own the copyright. At once a huge intellectual property issue looms.

The ability to quote or use small parts of a work as fair use has always been there as far as I know. This is a new way to use it, that's all. Is this post a looming intellectual property issue now?

Jeanneney says that Google is not what it seems. Its search results are biased by commercial and cultural pressures. He has a point. Try this: go to Google Book Search and enter Gustave Flaubert. The first results are full of English translations of Madame Bovary.

Given that the author points out elsewhere that the American libraries are the first to allow digitization of copyrighted books, I'm not sure why he is surprised by this.

"It's the readers who will have the final say" ... No, it is the teachers who will have the final say. They will determine whether people will read for information, knowledge or, ultimately, wisdom. If they fail and their pupils read only for information, then we are in deep trouble. For the net doesn't educate and the mind must be primed to deal with its informational deluge. On that priming depends the future of civilisation. How we handle the digitising of the libraries will determine who we are to become.

I don't even know what to make of this paragraph. The net doesn't educate? Teachers will dictate how we read books in the future? If students only read books for information, we're doomed? It seems like a random collection of ideas that aren't backed up with logical argument, but exists only to give a punchy ending paragraph.

I admit, I never cared much for The Times, but this sort of writing is below even their standards. It jumps all over the place, gets the facts wrong, generalises too much and is sensationalist in style. Poor show guys.

iTunes will be the iTunes for Books

[dr.badass]

Call me crazy, but I think iTunes is more likely to be 'iTunes for Books'. Here you have this hugely popular downloadable content store that already sells every other kind of media, versus Google, which, bless their hearts, has never had much success selling anything but ad space.

I don't think it's such big leap--the store is all ready there. iTunes already distributes some PDFs with music albums, and even supports them in podcast feeds. I assume PDF would be used because it's not yet-another-proprietary format, is extremely versatile, supports content protection, and is easy to produce.

The other part of the equation is the devices -- e-reader devices have traditionally sucked much ass through some combination of being bulky, low-resolution, greyscale, poor format support, poor battery life, and by virtue of being yet-another-device-to-carry-around. Regardless of what you think of the iPhone, I don't think you can argue that it's lacking in any of these areas: It'd make a damn-near perfect ebook reader. It already supports PDF, already syncs with iTunes -- it's begging for content. And I'm begging for a page-flipping gesture.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe Apple isn't planning to start selling ebooks -- but unless Google can make buying from them not suck (Google Video, I'm looking at you in disgust), and bring something more than a Blackberry as a reader, I still say Apple is in a much better position than Google is.

Are you sure about that?

[LuNa7ic]

Google hopes to 'do for books what the iPod did for music' Convert them into a obscure format and then riddle them with DRM?