Google announced that it would offer up more than half a million books to "any device with a browser" in early 2010. Google will offer e-books both directly, and with links to other online stores like Amazon, but the main feature will be searchable text from publishers with whom Google has reached an agreement. Google also states that it's not focused on selling to any particular e-reader or device, so it might be interesting to see how various parties line up on the Google/Amazon/Other divide.
Source:http://lifehacker.com/5382304/google-to-launch-e+book-store-in-early-2010

I can't wait to easily pirate any book i want =]

DPic:

It's an ebook store that will sell access to books. You won't be able to download books and you'll have to pay to read them.

[moved from "Google Editions coming"]

http://mobile.pcworld.com/htmlsite/html_article.php?id=1&CALL_URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcworld.com%2Fbusinesscenter%2Farticle%2F173749%2Fgoogle_online_bookstore_fuels_ereader_war.html

When I was in retail bookselling many years ago, the margin for a trade (non-textbook) bookseller was 40%. In this case, Google has zero inventory, the publisher assumes the shipping, and the margin is 37%. Not bad.

There's no shipping because books can only be read online. Don't forget that Google scanned the books, used OCR to convert images to text, stored the digitized versions, designed a search engine that lets you find books, created an online viewer for books and will probably handle payments as well.

PC World article has non-mobile version too with a bigger font and pictures – http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/173749/google_online_bookstore_fuels_ereader_war.html

But many time mobile URL's and printer-friendly versions are very easy to read. (And I *hate* ads with counters and forced ads before the article text)

All we need now is a decent tablet with some battery life to read these books on...

This is really amazing! Google is a luck to the world, in one sense.This collection has provided an international library on our table top!

Does this mean its going to be a tough time for the biggies like amazon.com and ebay.com? As we all know most google products are not just good but they set a new standard! I guess we need to wait and watch

[signature removed]

One other thing, what does it mean to libraries? is everything going to move to online?

[sig removed]