Cloud Computing: Google eBooks Launches with Android, iPhone, iPad Applications

Google Dec. 6 trotted out its long-awaited and delayed Google eBookstore, offering hundreds of thousands of paid titles and more than 2 million free titles, totaling 3 million-plus works. With so many titles at launch, eBooks is certainly an aggressive alternative to Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iPad and Barnes & Noble's Nook electronic reading platforms. What differentiates Google eBooks from those services is that there is no dedicated device for the books to run on. Google encourages users to search and pay for hundreds of thousands of titles from publishers and read them on their desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Book content, which includes more than 2 million free titles scanned into the Google Books platform, is not tethered to specific devices, but procured from the cloud. Google did, however, provide free e-reader applications for the Android and Apple iOS platforms, allowing users to read books from Android handsets and tablets, as well as Apple's iPad and iPhone devices. These applications are available from the Google eBookstore here now. eWEEK offers a brief visual tour of what these apps look like on Android devices, iPads and iPhones.