Google’s forthcoming digital bookstore, Google Editions, will launch in June or July of this year, Google’s Manager for Strategic Partner Development Chris Palma told The Wall Street Journal. The service will sell e-books on the web just like Amazon’s Kindle store or Apple’s iBooks.
Editions was originally slated for release in the first half of 2010 but that didn’t pan out, apparently.
As many as 500,000 books could be included, pulled from the partners with whom Google already made deals for its Google Books search engine (previously called “Google Print” and “Google Book Search”). The books can be downloaded via web browser and will presumably not be tied to any particular device or platform.
While Google Editions books might be readable on Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle e-readers (the Sony Reader devices are a shoe-in since Google’s existing book library is one of their major selling points already), the store will compete with the iBooks and Kindle stores. That competition could be good for consumers but frustrating for Apple and Amazon.
