
Google announces eBooks - adambyrtek
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/discover-more-than-3-million-google.html
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troymc
I got a Kindle in August, which has a similar "all your books in our cloud"
approach. Now I worry about Amazon being able to cancel or delete my account,
cutting me off from every book I bought in the Kindle Store. I feel like
that's giving them too much power.

The same problem exists with the new Google ebooks service.

I back up my computer with Time Machine and Carbonite. I'm not worried about
losing the ebooks stored on my computer. I don't need Amazon or Google to
"keep my books safe."

Compare to O'Reilly Media: "Whenever possible we provide [eBooks] to you in
five DRM-free file formats — PDF, ePub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, DAISY, and
Android .apk — that you can use on the devices of your choice." (from their
website)

Music from iTunes is similar to eBooks from O'Reilly: no DRM, download the
files and store them yourself.

~~~
jyoti00
That's why I never bought a Kindle.It's like paying for a book but be forced
to keep it only at the shopkeeper's shelf. Kindle means I don't own the book I
have paid for. Giving them too much power is another thing that I'm wary of.
So I still use various mail accounts, various options for online activities
instead of going ga-ga over all things G.

~~~
_pius
_That's why I never bought a Kindle.It's like paying for a book but be forced
to keep it only at the shopkeeper's shelf._

I don't know of any actual Kindle owners who feel that way.

~~~
natch
Right because those of us that feel that way, don't buy Kindles.

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sgift
Is it just me or is their bookstore search awful? I've tried various
programming subjects (software, software engineering, computer graphics, etc.)
and always get results like "Report of the 55th National Conference on Weights
and Measures 1970" or "Veterans' Administration FY 1988 budget"

~~~
grav1tas
If it's anything like the Android App Store search on my phone, I think I'll
stick with my Kindle, or real books. I'm confused how a company that made
search work so well has such poor offerings for things like my apps or these
books. What gives?

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nodata
+1

Android App search is terrible. Now this bookstore is too.

You'd think Google could get search right.

~~~
influx
GMail search is awful as well.

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cskau
And once again non-Americans are left out _sigh_

I can't help laughing when they even write about how incredibly open they are.

And what, even the video is private ? I'm guessing it's just location blocked.
.. but why??

~~~
robotron
Think about it. Really hard. In your visualizations use terms like "licensing"
and "international". You may find enlightenment this way.

~~~
masklinn
> Think about it. Really hard.

No need to think hard about it: Google simply doesn't give a shit. Really. Let
me remind you that, almost two years in, Google Voice is still completely and
utterly useless outside of North America.

> You may find enlightenment this way.

Enlightenment as to why the _video_ of their ebooks demo would be region-
locked?

~~~
amackera
Well, in Canada at least, there's pretty immovable legislation preventing them
from rolling it out.

~~~
bruceboughton
What legislation is that?

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Groxx
No Kindle support (though the web reader looks E-ink friendly). Amazon
_really_ needs to open up their SDK and allow you to write book-readers - they
could grab a huge market if they did. As-is, they may be left hurting if they
don't explicitly support this, especially if Google's claim of "the world's
largest selection of ebooks" is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt it).

~~~
xtho
Amazon should rather support epub format if they care to have some success in
Europe and maybe some other non-US markets.

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steve19
ePub is not the problem. It is the Adobe DRM that is comes baked into most
ePub documents that are sold.

~~~
Groxx
Which (I'm very sad to see, but maybe it'll change in time) Google has adopted
:\

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epochwolf
I'm not so much. My sony reader is compatible with Adobe DRM. :)

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steve19
"Google eBooks can be downloaded onto all eReader devices that run Adobe
Digital Editions"[0]

In other words: "Adobe DRM"

[0] <http://books.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=179863>

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msluyter

      1. Get a group of friends together with similar reading tastes.
      2. Create a new shared Google account.
      3. Share books.
      4. Profit? (Any reasons this wouldn't work?)

~~~
simonsarris
Assuming they will restrict the account to signing on from one location at a
time, it would be the equivalent of loaning others books in e-readers that
allow it.

Or the equivalent of a bunch of people sharing a Steam account.

~~~
troymc
You might start reading a book on your computer at home in the morning, and
you might leave that open as you rush off to work. You might open a second
copy on your e-reader as you go to work, and so on.

Therefore there are natural use cases where you have the same Google account
logged into Google ebooks on multiple devices at the same time.

Therefore Google must allow for those use cases.

Those use cases can be mimicked by friends sharing a Google account.

Google could check for obvious misuse. For example, they could look for two
devices separated by a large distance and using the same Google account with
Google ebooks at the same time. I know they already do something like that
with Gmail (for a different reason).

~~~
simonsarris
In those cases it can auto-logout of the previously connected platforms, the
same way Steam does.

~~~
troymc
What if I'm writing a paper on the books of Bill Bryson, I want to have In a
Sunburned Country open on my MacBook, and I want to have Notes from a Small
Island open on my iPhone (at the same time)?

There are legitimate reasons to have two devices logged into Google ebooks
with the same account at the same time.

Video games are different. Few people play two video games at the same time.

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izendejas
Looks like they definitely just scanned some books. I downloaded a sample of
"Information Theory and Statistical Learning" and the font was too pixelated
and thus unreadable on my android device unless I zoomed in. Zooming in only
evidences the pixelation even more.

An O'Reilly book seemed fine, so I want to imagine that technical/math-
notation intensive books are hard to optimize for e-reading. Anyone have some
knowledge about this? How hard is it to make a technical book's digital font
easier to read if you don't already have the LaTeX/pdf?

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americandesi333
I think this takes our personal library into the ubiquitous cloud, which is
great. But again, the key question is, will Google be able to integrate with
existing eBooks like Kindle, Nook or Plastic Logic. That will be the one big
thing that will determine their success...

Another cool feature I really like is the ability for small bookstores to
create their own storefront. That is a smart move. By opening the cloud, they
will capitalize on the marketplace created by someone else.

~~~
Groxx
Nook is on the list, but no Kindle. Though, ultimately, anything with web
access. The web reader looks pretty minimal, it'd probably run fine on an
E-ink device like the Kindle.

<http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/supported-devices>

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Flankk
Anyone remember Google Video? Me neither.

Amazon and Apple own the ebook market and Google doesn't even have a tablet.
Can you read Google ebooks on a Kindle? So much for read anywhere. Sorry
Google but you're late for the party.

~~~
danieldk
That's why there are standards, and the Google Bookstore supports two
standards (ePub and PDF).

You know, there are also people out there with Sony, BeBook, and iRiver
readers.

~~~
steve19
Both the ePub and PDF are DRM encumbered. I would not call those "standards".

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forza
"We designed Google eBooks to be open."

How exactly is this open?

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jws
The formats are open, ePUB and PDF. It is doesn't appear to me that you can
actually download the files.

• Android and iOS have dedicated reader apps that support offline reading.
Something is downloaded, but it might well be DRM wrapped.

• Web browser based reading appears to be online only. No mention of
downloading and using your own native reader on a laptop.

• The interesting one is the nook. For nook the book is transferred into the
native nook reader. Sounds like there might be some way to get the book in
that process, or maybe they have already DRM'd it with B&N's blessing.

Please, I already have a book reading app I like. I don't want your vanity
take on what a book reader should be. Just sell me the book.

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angrycoder
I've only done a quick skim, but their prices are really high. The ebook
version of many programming books are more expensive than their paper
counterparts at amazon.

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commieneko
I've been going nuts the last couple of months buying books from O'Reilly.
It's great, I can put them on my iPad, my iPod Touch, my laptop, my desktop,
whatever can read an ePub or a PDF. And no one can "recall" them. I have zero
interest in any other deal as far as ebooks are concerned.

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rmc
They mention how 'open' it is, however I want to know about the DRM of it?
IMHO you can't be fully open with DRM.

~~~
jdp23
apparently they mean 'open' in the sense of 'restricting users via DRM' and
'locks out most of the world'

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dotBen
Can anyone deduce what the DRM position is on books sold via Google Books?

Closest I can get is <http://books.google.com/help/ebooks/content.html> which
says PDF and ePUB formats that might have DRM in them -- but I wasn't aware
there was any (significant) DRM in PDF format.

~~~
protomyth
I read somewhere it was Adobe's.

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mark_l_watson
Why not support the Kindle? Creating books in the Kindle format is easy
enough. I don't understand this decision.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Answer my own question: ""The reader itself is built in Java, and will be
accessible on mobile devices via the browser or the standalone apps — the
Android app should be available now, and the iOS app will be so soon.""

~~~
jonhendry
The kindle is also implemented with Java (on top of Linux).

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nextparadigms
Finally! One more reason to boycott Amazon.

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mcantor
What? _No Kindle support_?

What kind of asinine universe are we creating for ourselves? This is what I
never understood about iTunes:

1\. The world discovers MP3s: music that you can listen to on any digital
music player! You know how you can take a tape cassette and play it in any
cassette player, and hear music? It's like that! Yay!

2\. iTunes sells iTunes music: music that you can listen to on... Apple
devices! Wait, what?

You mean I can download _digital music_ from iTunes, but it might not work on
my _digital music player_?

It must be because it's better, then. What's that? There's no technical
advantage? I am confused!

Now it's happening again! We have eBooks of various assortments. You read
eBooks with eReaders. Unless they're incompatible. How can you tell? Well, it
depends on where you bought each of them. It's getting to where you need a
damn chart.

We don't make cars that only run on certain fucking roads. Why do we make
music that only plays on certain fucking music players?!

I know all about DRM, and the incentives behind it. I know "why" it works this
way. I'm just lamenting how stupid it is that we are making things _more_
complicated, and _less_ inter-operable. It's fucking 2010. We're in the future
now. We should know better.

~~~
djacobs
An e-book's container format is (essentially) orthogonal to whether or not it
has DRM.

Kindle uses a convoluted, badly designed container, where everyone else uses
ePub, which is an open standard.

Bottom line: There is not Kindle support because Kindle is too picky.

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ivankirigin
Someone should make an ebooks site that uses Dropbox as a backend. Local file
control is a really important part of keeping files secure in the cloud.
Controled from a single company is really just control with a single point of
failure.

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unshift
dropbox not being a single company?

~~~
ivankirigin
I meant that you'll have a copy on all of your machines.

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bobobjorn
"Google eBooks is all about choice, so you can use just about any device you
own to read any book, anywhere." Aslong as you buy the book from google and
use googles software. Isnt that the oposite of choice?

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rb2k_
Works fine using a US VPN from Germany

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kevingailey
Keep Innovating Google..

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borism
What is it with Amazon that makes it possible for them to sell eBooks to
anywhere in the world no questions asked?

I hate DRM and I love my B&N nook, but fuck it, I want Amazon to make Kindle
app for nook!

Really tired of seeing "not available in your part of the world yet" for the
last few years in most eBook stores.

~~~
listic
Amazon is not selling eBooks to anywhere. Yes, selling in 100+ countries is
impressive, but there are 200+ of them.

~~~
borism
still, 100 > 1

