Google has finally opened the Google eBookstore offering a little more competition in the ebook space. Google executives describe the store as an "open ecosystem" with millions of free and paid books from over 4000 publishers.
Tom Turvey, the director for strategic partnerships at Google said:
“We really think it’s important that the book business have this open diversity of retail points, just like it does in print. We want to make sure we maintain that and support that.”
The eBookstore offers support for a range of devices. They support the iPod, iPad, Android devices and a large list of eBook readers including the Nook. Google is also partnering with independent books stores to sell the eBooks.
Oren Teicher, the chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, told the New York Times:
"This levels the playing field. If you want to buy e-books, you don’t just have to buy them from the big national outlets.”
Amazon has been the king of ebook sales but with Google getting into the game they could face some serious competition. The potential competition is getting publishers excited. Amazon knows that they are a dominate force in the ebook industry and they have been using that dominance to push publishers around causing several disputes. Amazon has even gone so far as to say that they will stop selling books from smaller publishers if they were to go to the Apple iBookstore.