Sony teams up with Google for eBook giveaway

 

Gallery

By Reuters

Posted on 19 Mar 2009 at 07:49

Sony is making public domain books from Google available to users of its eBook reader, vastly increasing the amount of available content on the device.

In the latest round of a growing digital book battle with Amazon, more than a half a million classic titles will be free to users of the Sony Reader. That will boost the available titles in Sony's eBook Store to more than 600,000, according to the company.

Sony sells two versions of its Reader, which competes directly with Amazon's Kindle. Kindle users can access more than 245,000 titles plus newspapers, magazines and blogs.

Whereas Amazon touts its relationship with publishers and access to a wide range of best-selling titles - which generally cost $9.99 - Google has sought to make its collection of public domain books widely available.

Public domain books, whether Jane Austin's Persuasion or Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, are no longer protected by copyright.

Last month, Google announced it was making the collection easily accessible to mobile devices such as the iPhone, and Amazon has said a similar move was afoot for the Kindle.

Sony Reader users will be able to read the Google books on their devices or download a PDF file to read on a computer.

The books are already accessible over the internet at Google's Books site.