Google Editions: a history of ebooks - Telegraph.co.uk

1971: Michael Hart launches Project Gutenberg, a volunteer scheme to create digital copies of cultural works to add to an archive.

1993: A company, Digital Book Inc, offers customers a floppy disk containing 50 ebooks encoded in the Digital Book Format (.dbf) format.

1995: Amazon starts selling printed books online, and soon comes to dominate the market.

1996: Project Gutenberg announces that it has digitised 1,000 books. Its target is one million titles.

1998: Some of the first ebook readers are launched, including the Rocket eBook, SoftBook, and they Cybook.

1999: Several online retailers start selling ebooks, such as eReader.com and eReads.com.

2000: Microsoft releases Microsoft Reader, dedicated ebook reading software. It could be used on Windows computers and PocketPCs, and used ClearType technology to ensure the type was legible on small devices.

2000: Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet is offered in a digital format, to read on a computer.

2002: Publishers Random House and HarperCollins sell digital versions of some titles.

2004: Google Print and Google Book Search, which would later become known as Google Books, are announced at the Frankfurt book fair.

2005: Amazon acquires Mobipocket, a software company that built ebook reading software for portable devices.

2006: Sony launches its first Reader ebook reading device, with eInk technology.

2007: Amazon unveils the Kindle, a dedicted ebook reader that can download ebooks over Wi-Fi or the mobile network from the Amazon website.

2008: BooksOnBoard starts to sell ebooks for Apple’s iPhone.

2009: Amazon launches the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX, while Barnes & Noble unveils the Nook.

2010: Apple launches the iPad, complete with iBooks ebook reading software. It also launches the iBookstore, a virtual bookstore selling ebook downloads.

2010: Amazon announces that ebook sales have outnumbered hardcover sales for the first time ever.

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Google Editions e-book venture to launch by year's end - Computerworld

Computerworld - After months of delays, Google will launch its e-book retail business, now being called Google Editions, in the U.S. before the end of the year, a spokesman for the company confirmed today.

The spokesman gave no reason for the delay and declined to offer other details. A Google executive had said in May that the company planned to sell digital books last summer.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the venture had cleared some technical and legal hurdles and that Google Editions would launch in the U.S. by year's end and internationally in the first quarter of 2011. A federal court recently gave preliminary approval to a settlement agreement between Google and authors and publishers, which apparently has provided further impetus for the Google e-book concept.

Under the Google system, independent booksellers are expected to be able to sell e-books through Google Editions -- and they have received contracts to make that happen, according to the WSJ report. Independent booksellers would benefit the most from Google's concept.

As early as May, Google was saying that it would allow people using a variety of devices to buy books from a broad range of Web sites. Google will compete against Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and Apple, among others, but it could distinguish itself by providing access to a diversity of e-book sources and supporting multiple reading platforms.

Google is expected to allow people to make e-book purchases through Google accounts that they would access through a Web browser. Many smartphones, computers and tablets access the Web through a variety of Web browsers.

Google already offers a service called Google Book Search, which allows people to search and preview millions of books from libraries and publishers globally. The new Google Editions would allow users of Book Search to buy a digital copy of a book, and Google would allow book retailers to sell Google Editions books on their own sites.

It appears that Google Editions is moving forward now in part because of a U.S. District Court in New York's preliminary approval on Nov. 19 of a settlement between Google and authors and publishers. Google has described the agreement on its Web site.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

Read more about E-business in Computerworld's E-business Topic Center.

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