The book world is bracing for yet another e-book development. In a move to increase the popularity of e-books, Google announced on Thursday that it will make its 1.5 million public domain books available free on mobile devices like the iPhone. On the same day, Amazon announced that it's also planning to make the titles available on its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available to a variety of mobile phones.
Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Amazon, told the New York Times: "We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones. We are working on that now."
It's thought that Google's move will significantly expand the number of e-books that are available for reading on the go, with the Kindle currently offering around 230,000 titles.
The books available through Google are not likely to be the most popular titles, however, as their public domain books are older works whose copyright has expired. The Kindle offers plenty of newly released books, including best sellers.
Google noted that they would eventually like to offer other books, including out-of-print titles and current books with the permission of publishing companies.
Frances Haugen, the product manager for Google Book Search, said: "This is our first step, but it is an important step."
The Google Book Search for computers displays scanned images of book pages, but the mobile version will simply display text, making it simpler and quicker to download.
There are currently several book reading programs that supply e-books to the iPhone and other mobile devices, though experts believe that mobile phones won't replace e-book readers like Kindle, in part due to the backlighting on a mobile phone that makes it harder to read.
