Google will start selling ebooks in the US before the end of the year, with international stores to follow in the first quarter of next year.
Scott Dougall, a Google product management director, told the Wall Street Journal, that the remaining technical and legal obstacles have been overcome. Meanwhile publishers have begun sending files to the store, an indication that Google Editions is close to opening.
Google Editions will differ from Amazon and Apple’s ebook stores. Readers will be able to buy titles both from Google and from independent retailers, with all the books collected in a single Google Editions account. And according to the WSJ, there won’t be a reader device or software — books will be accessible on any device with a web browser.
Relying on the web will provide Google with the biggest potential market, though it remains to be seen whether anyone wants to read books in a browser window.
Tech blogger and former MacUser editor Ian Betteridge is not convinced.
‘So I’ll be able to pay to read books in a browser? Yeah, that will work,’ he wrote on Twitter.
