Google launched Google Books about a year and a half ago, with rather limited functionality for the app, limited number of e-book titles, and an even more limited availability, being available in US-only. Even if it’s very hard to make those deals with publishers, it still felt like a bad move for them to launch it so early as such a limited product. It reminds me of the Google TV launch where they barely had any content or apps, too.
But even without the limited availability it still looks like Google Books is the most disappointing product made by Google in the last few years. They just don’t seem serious about it at all. They were rumored to launch it for at least 2 years before they did it, and then when it finally came out, it was one of the most basic book reading apps, which really surprised me considering they were (apparently) working on it for so long.
Then, even more disappointing is that they didn’t do anything innovative at all compared to Amazon from a business model point of view. How do they expect to take market share away from Amazon if they don’t do anything special? Just by putting it as a default app on Android won’t work. They aren’t even supporting self-publishing authors, like the way Amazon does it with Singles.
I’d definitely like Amazon to have some serious competition in e-books, especially if that competitor is Google, but they just don’t seem very serious about it at all, which makes me wonder why they even made the decision to enter this market. Their latest UI revamp and 3D page turning doesn’t even move the needle towards becoming a more competitive company in the e-book market.
If Google is not serious about turning this business around and actually becoming innovative, and of course actually being available on most places on Earth, then there’s no reason for Google to keep going. They’re just getting more bad reputation for keeping such a bad product.
[Via Phandroid]