But Google's game is information. That's how Google Books is positioned - not as a content business or a hardware business, but as an information business. Google wants knowledge to be accessible. The Kindle service might be the best integrated with devices, and iBooks might look great on the demo floor of an Apple Store. But as a set of features for an e-book service, I'm rooting for Google Books.

Friendly Formats

Kindle and iBooks are locked down. Their formats only work in their own environments. Google uses ePub and PDF, which means you can get them onto any device, one way or another. To read it on your Kindle, you'll have to settle for the PDF version, but hey, it works. For all the other major reading devices, Google Books will help you get your e-book on there, no matter how hard the device makes it.

Furthermore, Google offers rights owners the ability to license their books under Creative Commons, so the public can share and remix them. And thanks to Google's friendliness around digital rights management, lots of Google Books are free.

Offline Reading In The Browser

There's also the browser option. Yesterday, Google Books gave Chrome users the ability to read offline. The laptop is not the ideal place to read, compared to an e-ink reader or a tablet, which also allow offline reading. But not everyone has the luxury of owning multiple travel-sized computers. The Kindle Cloud Reader is a nice Web view, too, and it has offline reading. There's no denying that Kindle is an awesome service. But Google Books is more compatible overall with the widest variety of devices, and now it has this feature, too.

The Whole History of the Written Word

Google's mission is to catalog the world's information and make it searchable. That's why Google digitizes books in the first place. In true Google form, users get free tools like the Google Books Ngram Viewer, which lets us search the whole history of language. Google Books contains over 10% of the books ever published, dating back to 1400. That means, when you search the Ngram Viewer, you're getting a sizable sample of humanity's linguistic history.

Check out our post from after the launch of the Ngram Viewer to see how cool this book search tool is. And nobody but Google could build this on top of a book platform. Google Books may not be the snazziest e-book service, but it's the one with the right philosophy.

Do you read e-books? What services do you use, and what devices do you use for reading?

Google's e-book format is widely compatible, available on Android and Apple devices, Sony, Kobo and Elonex e-readers, as well as through the Web. They're stored in the cloud, so you can pick up where you left off on any device. You won't find native support for your Kindle or your Nook, though.

Google has its work cut out for it in e-books. After last week's high-profile launch of the Kindle Fire tablet and new e-ink Kindles, all of which are aggressively priced, Amazon is trying to get its e-readers into as many hands as possible. Barnes & Noble is also expected to update its Nook Color soon. These two leading e-book sellers want to dominate the marketplace by making their reading devices ubiquitous.

To stay in the game, Google is going the other way. Google Books are available in EPUB format, which is is the most open and compatible standard. The Google Books reader is available as a native app for Android and iOS. Google books can also be downloaded as PDF, which can then be moved to a Kindle, but with less control over the content.

Read more about today's U.K. launch on the Inside Google Books blog.

Where do you buy your e-books, and what devices do you read on?

Last month, Google announced that Google Labs, which allowed Google developers and users to "field test" experimental Web projects, will be phased out. Many Labs experiments will be sidelined, but the Ngram Viewer made it.

The Ngram Viewer joins a handful of other features that make Google Books interactive and immersive. In June, Google added doodling to a select group of its e-books. Back in 2009, Google offered rights owners the option to offer their books under Creative Commons licensing, so the public can share and remix them. Google's efforts to digitize the world's books have created their fair share of consternation in the publishing world, but they sure have given us access to some wonderful data.

Major religions of the world.

Nerds, Dorks, Geeks and Dweebs.

But over the weekend, updates were issued for many e-reader apps, removing links to their bookstores in order to comply with Apple's new rules. These stipulate that Apple receive a 30% cut from in-app purchases and subscriptions, something that many publishers balked at, contending that that cut was too high.

One by one, it appears that most of the major e-reader apps have now complied: Kobo, Borders, Nook Kids, and finally this morning, the Kindle apps have all been updated with links to their respective stores removed.

The Google Books app, however, was removed from the store entirely, for reasons that weren't clear. But the app is now available to download again.

Usability Issues

Users will still be able to access their purchased content via these apps. But in order to buy new e-books, they'll have to go through Safari directly, rather than see those apps open the browser directly to the store, as they used to.

The changes are causing some usability issues. Martin Taylor from ActivityPress reports that books he'd purchased via the Safari mobile browser would not open in the Kobo app. Instead, he was prompted to open the newly downloaded file with either the Bluefire or OverDrive apps, both of which handle DRM-restricted content.

The major booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble might not suffer from these changes or from new usability issues. Customers are likely accustomed to using the Web to buy content from them already and the Kindle does allow users to download content wirelessly regardless of where they purchase the e-book. But these usability issues might be a bigger problem for a company like Kobo.

In the meantime, you can always opt not to upgrade your e-reader apps as doing so seems to keep those bookstore links functioning - for now.

But it seems those negotiations are taking too long, and at a conference between the groups today, Judge Chin put pressure on those involved to finalize things, threatening to set a "tight discovery schedule" if things aren't resolved when the group comes before him next on September 15.

Chin had argued that the settlement should have authors opt in to having their works digitized (and therefore searchable) by Google, rather than have them opt out, as the proposed settlement would have it.

And according to some indications from today's meeting, an opt-in agreement is in the works. James Grimmelman reports in The Laboratorium that spokesperson Michael Boni, speaking for both Google and the plaintiffs, indicated that "the parties have been aiming for an opt-in settlement.' What that might mean is not obvious. It could mean an actual opt-in settlement, one that binds only class members who send in claim forms. It could mean a settlement in which Google commits to an open-ended offer to all class members. It could mean a narrower, scanning-and-searching-only settlement, so that copyright owners can 'opt in' to book sales by striking their own individual deals with Google."

Although all parties did tell the judge today that negotiations are moving forward, a resolution to the Google Books case doesn't seem much closer. Judge Chin, however, seems determined to force things forward come September.

The shuttering of the e-bookstore was something that Melville House Publishing wrote about today, contending that publishers are finding it difficult to get started in the bookstore and that Google has pulled its developers from the project. When ReadWriteWeb asked Google to comment, the company responded, "We refuse to comment on rumor and speculation," pointing to a blog post from Monday touting some of the successes from the first 6 months of the Google Books program: three million free Google eBooks and 250 independent booksellers selling them, for example.

But more interesting - although difficult to say if more plausible - is the possibility of an e-book rental service.

Speaking on the panel, Google Books Director of Product Management Scott Dougall wouldn't confirm that the company would unveil some sort of rental program, "but his tone suggested it's on the way: 'We haven't announced anything like that.' [pause] 'Yet.'" And when ReadWriteWeb reached out to Google for a comment about this rumor, the response was quite different than the one above: "We haven't announced any plans."

Could Rentals Be a Better Way to Complete with Amazon?

As the paidContent story points out, Amazon currently controls about 60% of the e-book market and Barnes & Noble has between 20 to 25%. Apple's iBookstore has about 10%, and Kobo has less than 10%. "That leaves very little room for Google."

But stepping into the e-book rental business might be a new avenue for Google to make inroads into the e-book market. Although consumers can loan (some of) their Kindle and Nook e-books to each other, that's a very different thing than a Netflix-like or a library-like rental system.
Last month, Amazon announced that it would be launching a "Lending Library later this year, giving Kindle owners the ability to check out e-books from their local library.

Could Google get into the e-book rental game? What sorts of deals with publishers would this require? And would users choose to go to Google for this service, rather than some of the other e-book publishers and providers out there?

Called the Books Ngram Viewer, the tool offers a fascinating look at the way that language, literature and culture have changed throughout recent history. I've been typing in all kinds of fun searches and have included screenshots of 10 of my favorites below. What do all these changes mean? It's probably fodder for endless after dinner conversation and drinking games. Some of them are surprising and some are not at all. We would love it if you would share your thoughts and links to your favorite Ngram search results with other ReadWriteWeb readers in comments below. Thanks, Google, for providing this great example of the beauty made possible through indexing large sets of data.

Changing media types. Hello, radio in WWII era books! And look at the tiny little Internet, just starting to get in the game, there in the right hand corner.

Seven deadly sins. Looks like we're growing less fixated and finding other things to write about.

Angels vs. Unicorns vs. Mermaids. Not even close.

Garlic vs. Onion. We are living in changing times, people.

Carrot vs. Celery Celery probably thought it was pulling into the lead for good. Not so!

Major religions of the world. Indexed literature is growing increasingly diverse.

Drugs

Phobias and prejudices. Is this a chart of what the world cares about most?

Nerds, Dorks, Geeks and More

Authors: Huxley vs Camus vs Leary vs McLuhan Honestly, I think this one is the one that surprised me the most. If not carrot vs celery.

Want to see more? There's a whole community of Ngram collection going on over at Ngrams.Tumblr.com.

The page is a play on words referring to Twitter's "Fail Whale," the well-known "Twitter down" page that became famous - or rather, infamous - during Twitter's heavy growth period back in 2008.

Growing e-book sales and the opportunity for targeted advertising mean space in e-books is ripe for corporate messages. Add rapidly falling e-reader prices and the planned Google e-book store and the pressure is on for publishers and retailers to increase revenue from digital books.

But the lack of ads in paper books isn't because book-reading is sacred, Ron Adner and William Vincent argue. Companies don't advertise in books because there is no guarantee of when or whether the book will sell. That's all changing, they say:

In short, physical books can't compete with other print media for advertisers. Digital books can. With an integrated system, an advertiser or publisher can place ads across multiple titles to generate a sufficient volume. Timeliness is also possible, since digital readers require users to log in to a central system periodically.

The tech giants have already realized this potential. Google places ads next to search results in its Google Books archive, which already has ten million scanned texts. Amazon filed a patent for advertisements on the Kindle last year, and Apple could easily make the leap to in-book advertising using its iAds platform (Why iAds Could be Bigger Than iPads).

Advertising in books - the tangible things that you put on your shelf or leave on your coffee table - seems weird. But e-books aren't a possession. You can't lend an e-book to a friend (note: the Nook lets users "lend" certain books out once each, for 14 days only). Amazon can even cause your e-book to disappear to disappear from your e-library.

What do you think? Are ads in e-books a violation of the treasured ritual of reading? Or a necessary way to subsidize prices in the age of readable bits?

Back on April Fool's Day, 3D viewing was accessed from a button within the Google Books app, and now the feature has returned as a URL hack Easter egg. It's pretty clear Google doesn't really expect people to read text in 3D - reading is tough enough on the eyes already - but they obviously think it's fun to leave it in. When viewing in 3D, the text becomes an anaglyphic image and is bent to give the appearance of a rounded book page. Any pair of red-cyan 3D glasses should work, Google says.

While Google is clearly having some fun here, does this bring up a larger question about 3D? Are books a viable market for 3D technology? This writer respectfully disagrees with anyone that says they are, at least until 3D technology improves. Then again, I'm more inclined to listen to an audiobook these days than read a physical book, so perhaps a little glitz and sparkle is what the printed (or digital) page needs.

Follow this link to see an example of 3D viewing in Google Books, and leave us your thoughts on 3D reading in the comments. And if someone has 3D glasses on them, let us know what you think of the Google Books 3D experience.

When we first heard about Google Editions last year, Google's plan was to offer around half a million books at launch. At the time, Google also noted that it wanted its books to be compatible with any device, whether that's a laptop, phone or dedicated e-reader. Apple's tablet wasn't on the horizon back then, but chances are that Google will also want its books to be compatible with this new platform. Given that Google is already using the ePub standard, we can only hope that Google's plan is to sell DRM-free ePub books.

Bloomberg reported this morning that Google "has agreed to meet demands from a local writers' group that it stop scanning and uploading books to the company's online library without authors' permission."

This certainly isn't the first time Google has run into complaints over its practices with the project. Last month, the company was convicted of violating France's copyright laws. A Globe and Mail report on Google's practices stated that over 80% of the French books offered were still under copyright. The company has also faced criticism in Germany over its Google Books service, where today the German minister of Justice warned that the company may be reaching monopoly status, requiring government intervention.

The Bloomberg article notes that in China, Google trails behind the search engineBaidu. This is in a country with more Internet users than the entire population of the United States. But is the problem of supposed copyright infringement a public relations issue in a country where the average consumer sees counterfeit products in nearly every storefront window? While we stand on the side of writers getting paid for their work, we're not sure this issue would really stand in the way of Google gaining popularity in China.

While Judge Chin notes that the settlement can have positive affects on the public, he states, "It would appear that if a fair and reasonable settlement can be struck, the public would benefit. Under all the circumstances, it makes no sense to conduct a hearing on the fairness and reasonableness of the current settlement agreement, as it does not appear that the current settlement will be the operative one."

Instead of the hearing, the court will hold a status conference to review next steps to the case. To view the order visit the Google Book Settlement Page.

Photo Credit: Timothy Vollmer

For now, this new feature is only available in the United States, though according to a blog post on the Google Book Search blog, the company plans to make this feature "available elsewhere in the future."

While groups such as the National Writers Union oppose the settlement on the grounds that Google is violating author rights, and Yahoo and Microsoft oppose the settlement for fear of a price fixing cartel, the latest objection adds new perspective.

The argument reminded us of John Battelle's "database of intentions" - an aggregated list of personal search results, page visits and bookmarks. He explains that while the database of intention lives in a number of places, four major players including Google hold the bulk of this information. He wrote, "This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends."

While this may seem like a paranoia today, it wasn't long ago that rumors surfaced of US intelligence authorities monitoring net usage to gain electronic evidence against members of al-Queda. In response, Darwinder S. Sidhu's 2007 report outlines how the majority of polled Muslim-Americans believe that their Internet activities are being monitored.

The latest Google privacy objection argues that this fear of being tracked is enough reason for consumers to change their behavior. For the complete filing download the PDF

If you thought your casual reading might have a slim chance of being subpoenaed, would you change your reading habits? Let us know in the comments below.