Google’s Bid to Control the “Digital-book Ecosystem”

Google envisions a “device agnostic” reading experience for e-books, which means circumventing Amazon’s control of the e-book market with its Kindle reader. When Google invokes a “digital-book ecosystem” (love the way ecosystem is becoming the euphemism de jour), guess who would be the top of the food chain?

According to NPR:

[Google] announced recently that it has an e-book plan in the works that could be ready by the end of this year. The Google model promises a different e-book experience, one that doesn’t require a reading device like Kindle. Instead of downloading books, users will buy online access to them. As long as readers are connected to the Internet, they could conceivably access the book from their local bookstores’ Web sites — maybe even right from the publisher.

Gabriel Stricker, the director of book search communications at Google, says the company’s plan is to create a “digital-book ecosystem,” which he describes as “online space where you have the ability to have your books be discovered and make money off of them.”

Stricker emphasizes that the idea is still in development, but he says that eventually Google’s e-book service should be what he calls “device agnostic.”

“We want to be able to have folks search for books anywhere, and not just when they happen to be at a computer,” he says. “That could be when they are on a PC or a smart phone or a netbook or a dedicated reading device.”

Publishers, who have been concerned that the Kindle would allow Amazon to control not just the e-book market but also the price of e-books, are likely to welcome Google’s device-agnostic concept — especially since Google has the size, money and technical know-how to compete with Amazon.

Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant and CEO of the Idea Logical Company, says Google may also solve a problem for publishers that has haunted both the recording and film industries.

“What Google accomplishes here is that they totally sidestep the piracy and digital rights management issue, because there is no possession of the file, [and] therefore there is no way for you to give the file to anyone else,” Shatzkin says.

But the question remains: Are avid readers — who are just starting to accept the idea of electronic reading devices — ready for an even more intangible notion of the book? Google is betting they are.

This story was followed immediately by another NPR report on Google’s deal with publishers:

Antitrust investigators at the Justice Department are looking into a deal between Google and book publishers. Critics say the deal will give Google too much power over what could become a large segment of the online book market.