How Google Editions Will Make ‘Kindle Killers’ Irrelevant

Thanks to Google (NSDQ:GOOG) Editions, Google has put Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN), Barnes & Noble and every other vendor with a stake in e-readers on high alert: The game is already changing.

Google’s Google Editions service is a cloud-based online bookstore that will allow customers to buy e-books through a variety of formats for use on any number of devices. The main challenge to e-reading titans like Amazon and its budding Kindle empire is that Google’s e-reading product is neither a dedicated e-reading device — which is the most commonly seen Kindle threat, with everyone from Sony and Plastic Logic to, soon, Barnes & Noble in the game– nor a quaint e-reading application.

Rather, it’s a full-tilt online library through which Google will get a piece of how e-books are bought and sold. Google Editions also will support the widest variety of e-reading formats — a direct challenge to Kindle and any other e-readers that insist on a closed, proprietary format. Let Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony and everyone else kill each other over e-reading supremacy, Google seems to be saying, we’ll just get a piece of every coming-and-going e-book.

Read more: .crn.com