Google has launched its long-awaited e-book-only bookstore putting, it in competition with Amazon, Apple, and Borders for the electronic book market. The store is only available to U.S. customers to begin with, and Google claims that it will have the largest electronic book catalog with more than 3 million titles. However, only about 200,000 of these books are from licensed book publishers. About 2.8 million of the books are no longer under copyright in the U.S., and Google has scanned them from university libraries as part of its controversial Google Books project.
In response to this project, Amazon told a federal court that allowing Google to scan and sell millions of out-of-print books whose copyright owners can't be found gives Google an unfair advantage in the electronic book market. Amazon's objection comes even though Google has offered to let Amazon and other booksellers sell these books as well. These controversial books will not be available in the bookstore until a federal court judge in Manhattan makes a ruling.
To learn more, read the full article by Ryan Singel from Wired online.
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