Google to go into the e-book business

> [Google](http://topics.sfgate.com/topics/Google), stepping up competition with Amazon.com, will open an online store for electronic versions of books in the [United States](http://topics.sfgate.com/topics/United_States) this year and internationally in 2011, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans. > > The Mountain View company is working with book publishers to sell hundreds of thousands of e-books, said the person, who asked not to be identified because details of the project haven’t been made public. > > Google intends to use its position as the world’s most popular search engine to erode Amazon’s dominance of e-books, while Apple harnesses the iPad tablet and iTunes online store to make its own inroads. The competition means Amazon’s share of digital books will decline to 35 percent over the next five years from 90 percent in early 2010, Credit Suisse Group AG estimated in February. Three things. First, is there anything Google isn’t trying to get its paws into these days? How many products are they going to fail at before they hit on another success?

Second, look at how that last sentence I just quoted states that Amazon will go from 90% to 35% in e-book sales. It’s stated there as if it were definitely going to happen, just because some analyst group suggested it back in February. How about some follow-up on what’s actually happened since February? So far, Apple’s iBooks is the only serious competitor to Amazon in the e-book market, and by all indications, Apple is doing fine with iBooks, but not really threatening Amazon at all. So where’s the 35% part come in? Are we supposed to believe that Google will set up a bookstore and AUTOMATICALLY a huge chunk of Amazon customers will just flock to Google? As long as Google doesn’t block Amazon’s Kindle app from Android devices (wouldn’t THAT be ironic?) I don’t see why anyone would choose Google’s bookstore over Amazon’s anytime soon.

Last, does anyone remember back in the good old days, when Google claimed it was scanning all those books to promote the free spread of information? They were creating a digital library, so people could read whatever they wanted for free. Google was so nice, after all. It would never do evil.

Now they’re setting up a bookstore for profit. Which would be just fine. It really would. But once Google Books goes live, and you do a search on an author or a book title, what are the chances that the first link that pops up is going to be an Amazon link?

Keep tainting those search results, Google.