Google eBook Thoughts

January 22nd, 2007

TechnologyHaving worked for two eBook companies in the past (mightywords.com and SoftBook Press which merged with Rocket eBook) I thought I’d chime in a bit on the concept of Google and eBooks. I’ve mused about this in the past and my opinions are still the same. Let me quote myself:

“I’ll just say in order for these readers to succeed, the DRM has to be held back. Any hopeful hardware eBook reader really should look at the iPod as their business model. With the iPod, although it is frowned upon, it is technically quite easy for people to rip their own CDs and push content to the device. If the iPod did not allow people to do this and only relied on the iTunes Music Store for content purchases, there is no question in my mind that it would have failed dismally: no matter how cool or useable Apple made the hardware… allow people to put their own content on their hardware, be it PDF, text files, whatever. In any case, I’m sure that Apple will let us do this on a future iteration of the iPod and have the e-book market wrapped up in a few months.”

Now Google has been working with Apple on “something” and it’s probably not just Google Maps on the iPhone. I think it would be an awesome idea to somehow get all of the library books Google’s been scanning in onto an eBook device. If so, I hope for several things:

  1. Use Apple’s iTunes as the model for managing content on a PC that is pushed to the device.
  2. Allow people to push any text and image content (RTF, HTML, PDF) to the device.
  3. Please for the love of all that is sacred, don’t saddle this thing with intrusive DRM.

As I mentioned before, if Google and Apple swing this eBook stuff as added capability to a future, full-screen iPod (or perhaps the mythical MacTablet), they’ll have the eBook market sewn up in a matter of months. And I’d be pretty stoked to see the original vision of Jim Sachs come true, even if it isn’t through the company he founded, and I once worked for.

Additional reading: Mathew Ingram, Mark Evans, BusinessWeek

Disclosure: I own a tiny amount of Apple stock.

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4 comments!

  1. comment Gravatar Can Google make e-books work? » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work - January 22nd, 2007

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  2. comment Gravatar Katrina - January 22nd, 2007

    I love all of the devices that come with the ipod. I only hope that my purse can keep up with all of this stuff.

    Katrina
    http://www.ellistrations.com/ipodmaniac.htm

  3. comment Gravatar tunequest - January 23rd, 2007

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Google’s “ebook” model followed similar idea as Google Videos. In addition to all the public domain content that Google has been harvesting, the service would allow users/publishers to post their own content and set their own prices, with a lot of it being posted for free.

    Download it, sync it a la iPod and away you go, assuming the device is compelling enough.

    Built-in text-to-speech would be nice as well.

  4. comment Gravatar webomatica - January 23rd, 2007

    Text to speech is a good idea… one feature of Leopard that was demoed at Macworld was improved Mac voices and a speed-talking mode.

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