Amazon.com's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle shows that there is a clear business opportunity in the e-book market. And Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is taking notice.
According to the New York Times, the search-engine giant indicated at the BookExpo convention that it wants to make a grab for this market.
OK, Google won't launch a handheld device. Instead, the company wants to make it easy to sell e-books via its own website. With Google's current infrastructure, it should be relatively easy to pull this off. In fact, over the years the company has been scanning millions of books (although, this has raised concerns with the U.S. Justice Department).
More importantly, Google plans to allow free-reign for publishers to select pricing. This could be a boost to the book publishing industry, which is under pressure right now.
When will the Google e-book program hit the market? It sounds like it will be by the end of 2009.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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