The invitations have been sent, the Morgan Library in NYC is ready to host, and the rumors are swirling… will this coming Monday, February 9th, finally be the day that Amazon announces Kindle 2.0? With a waitlist already 4 – 6 weeks long for the first version, 230,000 titles already available and industry analysts expecting the Kindle 2.0 to push Amazon.com to unprecedented sales levels… nothing could spoil this party!
Except maybe Google that is.
Google announced today the availability of a mobile version of its Google Book Search product which will allow Android and iPhone users access to over 1.5million books, for free, that are currently available via its service. The books may be free to users, but they didn’t come cheap to Google. In 2008 it settled a 4 year legal battle with publishers to make the books available at a cost of approximately $125M. There is a catch though – most of the books were published prior to 1923, so you have to like classical literature to appreciate the offering; right now at least. But Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder has stated that it’s, "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” so this could just be the beginning of what becomes available for mobile phones from Google.
So – is Amazon.com all dressed up for a party that no one will care about? That remains to be seen… I think it all comes down to whether customers really want to read a book on their iPhone or Gphone screen. The Amazon PR department though surely must be thinking of Charles Dickens’ famous introduction, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” in preparing for this press event. Let’s just hope they’re not reading A Tale of Two Cities for free on Google Book Search.
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