Sony & Google. A Worthy Adversary?

Since I have returned from my epic spring break trip to Barcelona and rejoined the news buzz around the Kindle, electronic literature, and the like. What I have discovered is that real competition that opposes Amazon’s current control of this specific market has officially stepped up.

In my previous post to this blog, I noted that Amazon was finally seeing some competition in terms of hardware gadgets (coming from the iriver company) and also seeing some competition in terms of the grander scheme of the e-book market (coming from big time book sellers Barnes & Noble). However, neither of these really posed a solid threat to Amazon. The Kindle 2 is by far the predominant e-book reader and Barnes and Nobles recent acquisition of smalltime e-book provider Fictionwise only added about 50k e-books to their library (peanuts in comparison to Amazon’s library which is over five times the size).

However, old rival Sony and their Reader product were recently backed by everyone’s favorite corporation: Google. The idea of Google entering the fray even sounds intimidating and Amazon might have a reason to be slightly worried. The new partnership between Sony and Google can be further analyzed at a New York Times article found HERE.

Yet, as the article mentions Amazon’s executives aren’t too worried because the books Google is providing to Sony’s catalogue are merely old books in which copyright licenses have expired. This library would include classics by Mark Twain for example but certainly wouldn’t provide books available on the current New York Times best sellers list. While the article is a little vague, it is my understanding that what Google is providing to Sony is actually their Google books section of their website, which is certainly a vast catalogue despite the fact it only provides full versions of books which have outdated copyright licenses.

The reason why I think Google stands so much potential is its open, “E-pub” format for providing e-books. This format is one that would make books extremely accessible and easy to digitally manage. This format alone could quite simply be appealing enough to consumers to make them the favored e-book provider over Amazon and its Kindle. This would also progress the concept of e-books to an MP3 like system of books, which are very easy to manage, send, transfer, etc. This format is undoubtedly more user friendly and less controlling than the current format provided by Amazon which seems to merely mimic a book store in digital form.

All in all, while I don’t believe that Amazon should be extremely intimidated just yet, Google is certainly a force to be reckoned with and certainly stands lots of potential to become a much more predominant player in this race to be leader of the e-book market. While its library primarily consists of older literature at the time, the moment it breaks through into the best sellers market and the like, it could easily launch Sony forward to take the reigns of the E-book market.