Google Play Books, formerly Google eBooks, is an
ebook
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
digital distribution
Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content (media), content such as Sound recording and reproductio ...
service operated by
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
, part of its
Google Play
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...
product line. Users can purchase and download ebooks and
audiobook
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
s from
Google Play
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...
, which offers over five million titles, with Google claiming it to be the "largest ebooks collection in the world". Books can be read on a dedicated Books section on the Google Play website, through the use of a
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...
available for
Android and
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
, through the use of select
e-reader
An e-reader, also called an e-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals.
Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an e-read ...
s that offer support for
Adobe Digital Editions
Adobe Digital Editions (abbreviated ADE) is an e-book reader software program from Adobe Systems, built initially (1.x version) using Adobe Flash. It is used for acquiring, managing, and reading e-books, digital newspapers, and other digital pub ...
, through a web browser and reading via
Google Home
Google Nest, previously named Google Home, is a line of smart speakers developed by Google under the Google Nest brand. The devices enable users to speak voice commands to interact with services through Google Assistant, the company's virtual ...
. Users may also upload up to 2,000 ebooks in the
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
or
EPUB
EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...
file formats. Google Play Books is available in 75 countries.
Google Play Books was launched in December 2010, with a reseller program letting independent booksellers sell Google ebooks on their websites for a cut of sales. It also launched an
affiliate program
Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process. It is a form of pe ...
in June 2011, allowing website owners to earn a commission by referring sales to the then-named Google eBookstore. However, the reseller program ended in April 2012, with Google stating that it had "not gained the traction that we hoped it would" and "not met the needs of many readers or booksellers". The affiliate program closed for new signups in February 2012, with Google announcing that it would scale down the initiative, making it private and invitation-only.
The mobile Android app has seen several significant updates since its introduction, including different reading modes with color contrasts, support for text highlighting and note-taking, a zoomed-out view with easy page sliding in an effort to improve reading experiences for books not read cover-to-cover, a vertical scrolling mode for
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
s, a "Night Light" feature that gradually filters blue light to reduce eye strain after sunset, using
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
imaging technologies to expand
speech bubble
Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a charac ...
s in comics, and listening to audiobooks.
As the Play Books store had been noted to hold much pirated content, Google discontinued new sign-ups to its publisher program in 2015. The program was reopened only in 2018 when it incorporated an automated process to decline books found to contain extensive text copied from other books already in the store.
History
The history of Google Play Books can be traced to the Google eBooks service offered by Google before the Google Play brand came into existence. The Google eBookstore was launched on December 6, 2010, with more than three million titles available, making it the "largest ebooks collection in the world".
At the time of launch, the service was partnered with 100 independent booksellers, while the number of publishers was 5,000. This increased to 250 independent booksellers and 7,000 publishers in May 2011, along with three million free Google eBooks available in the United States, up from two million at launch.
The service was
codenamed Google Editions, the name under which it was widely assumed that the service would be launched. Google Books director
Dan Clancy had talked about Google's vision to open an ebookstore for in-print books in an interview back in July 2009. Then-named ''TechHive'' reported in October 2009 that the service would be launched in the first half of 2010, before a Google employee told the media in May that the launch would be in June or July. The actual launch, however, took place in December.
The store was headed by Dan Clancy, who also directed
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
. Clancy stated that Google Editions would let publishers set the prices for their books and would accept the 'agency' model, as that of the publisher being considered the seller with the online vendor acting as an 'agent'. Clancy also stressed that Google's ebooks would be readable on any device, indicating the open nature of the platform. It would also make ebooks available for bookstores to sell, giving "the vast majority" of revenues to the store. Having already digitized 12 million physical books at the time, including out-of-print titles, Google offered a "far greater" selection than
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
and
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
did.
In June 2011, Google introduced an
affiliate program
Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process. It is a form of pe ...
for ebooks, allowing websites to earn commissions by referring sales to the Google eBookstore. Google eBooks became listed on the
Google Affiliate Network.
In March 2012, Google revamped all of its digital distribution services into a single platform called
Google Play
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...
, with the Google eBookstore becoming Google Play Books.
In April 2012, Google announced that its reseller partner program would be discontinued by the end of January 2013.
In July 2013, Google made some changes to the publisher policy page for Google Play Books, removing mentions of book bundle pricing, and adding several mentions of ebook rentals. Google also dropped support for a wide variety of ebook
file format
A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free.
Some file formats ...
s it used to accept, including
DOC
DOC, Doc, doc or DoC may refer to:
In film and television
* ''Doc'' (2001 TV series), a 2001–2004 PAX series
* ''Doc'' (1975 TV series), a 1975–1976 CBS sitcom
* "D.O.C." (''Lost''), a television episode
* ''Doc'' (film), a 1971 Wester ...
,
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
,
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
,
MOBI Mobi or MOBI may refer to:
Companies
* Mobi (company), an American wireless provider
Computing
* .mobi, internet top domain name
* .mobi, a file extension of the deprecated Mobipocket e-book format
People
* Mobi Fehr (born 1994), American soc ...
and
PDB, to focus primarily on the
EPUB
EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...
format.
In early May 2015, Google announced that a new custom-made
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
called
Literata
Literata is an old-style serif typeface commissioned by Google and designed by the independent type foundry TypeTogether. It was released in 2015 and is the default font family in Google Play Books, since version 3.4.5. The typeface was intended ...
would be used for Google Play Books.
Towards the end of the month, Google announced that it was temporarily closing its Books Partner Center for new signups, stating that it was to "improve our content management capabilities and our user experience." This was presumably in response to the observations of extensive piracy on the ebookstore reported by ''The Digital Reader''. However, it continued to remain closed for a long time, leading ''The Digital Reader'' to speculate that the closure would be permanent, commenting that "Google has only a minimal interest in ebooks." During this time, the only way authors and publishers could get their content on to the store was through aggregators, such as PublishDrive, ebookpartnership and StreetLib.
In September 2015, Google acquired
Oyster
Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not al ...
, a subscription-based ebook service. As a part of the acquisition, Oyster shut down its existing service in early 2016, and its founders joined Google Play Books in New York.
In January 2018, Google began selling
audiobook
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
s that can be listened via the app.
In June 2018, Google reopened its publisher program to new sign-ups. To curb piracy, text of new books would now be compared with that of other books in the store.
Reseller program
At launch, Google had formed partnerships with independent booksellers, enabling them to sell Google ebooks on their websites for a cut of sales. Bookstore partners included
Powell's,
Alibris
Alibris is an online store that sells new books, used books, out-of-print books, rare books, and other media through an online network of independent booksellers.
History
Martin Manley founded Alibris in 1997 with the team behind early o ...
and participating members of the
American Booksellers Association
The American Booksellers Association (ABA) is a non-profit trade association founded in 1900 that promotes independent bookstores in the United States. ABA's core members are key participants in their communities' local economy and culture, and t ...
.
In a blog post in May 2011, Google announced that it had over 250 independent bookseller partners, compared to just over 100 at the time of launch.
In April 2012, Google decided to end the reseller program, stating that the program "has not gained the traction that we hoped it would" and that "it's clear that the reseller program has not met the needs of many readers or booksellers". The program was discontinued at the end of January 2013.
As noted by ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'', the service "sought to bring independent retailers into the digital retailing", by giving local bookstores a fee from each title purchased by consumers, but local stores were required to do their own marketing and promotion, something that "many stores simply did not have the resources to do". Seen as a "big blow for small bookstores seeking to compete against
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
and
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...
", the move attracted severe criticism from the industry. In a letter to its members, the American Booksellers Association said that it was "very disappointed" in Google's decision while noting that the change could be "disconcerting and disruptive" for booksellers. "As an enormous, multinational corporation, Google has interests far beyond independent bookstores, and the book world at large, and, at times, it has lacked understanding of many basic principles of our industry", the letter said.
Affiliate program
In June 2011, Google launched an
affiliate program
Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process. It is a form of pe ...
for Google eBooks, allowing website owners to earn a commission by referring sales to the Google eBookstore. Google had previously tested the program as a limited
beta
Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...
in December 2010 with
Goodreads
Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and read ...
.
Becoming an affiliate was described by ''
Gigaom
Gigaom is a technology focused analyst firm and media company. The company evolved from a blog which offered news, analysis, and opinions on startup companies, emerging technologies, and other technology related topics. It was started by Om Malik ...
'' as a three-step process: users first had to sign up for an
AdSense
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...
account and be approved, then join the
Google Affiliate Network and be approved, and then sign up as an affiliate for ebooks. Website owners could earn between 6-10% of a book's selling price, depending on the number of book sales through affiliate referrals.
In February 2012, Google announced its decision to scale down the affiliate program, turning it into a private initiative and removing most of the affiliates. Google eBooks would no longer be listed as an advertiser on the Google Affiliate Network. Google had previously stopped accepting new applications for becoming an affiliate more than two weeks prior to the announcement.
Those who were delinked from the program received commissions for sales up to March 15, 2012. Google said that it would continue to add affiliates, but only on an invitation-basis. In a mistake, Google also notified independent booksellers that their affiliate status would expire, but later clarified that it did not intend to remove independent booksellers from the affiliate program, and said that it was "working to reinstate those who were mistakenly notified."
Piracy
In May 2015, ''The Digital Reader'' reported its findings of extensive
piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
prevailing on the Play Books store. Website writer Nate Hoffelder noted that there were several e-book pirates selling non-authentic copies of e-books at reduced prices. They were of inferior quality, with "missing formatting, generic or outdated covers, and other problems". One day later, ''The Digital Reader'' reported that Google had removed the pirated book listings in response to the article, but deemed it far from enough.
Platforms
Books purchased can be read on a dedicated Books section of the
Google Play
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...
website, through the
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...
available for
Android and
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
devices, and through the use of a
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
web browser app. Offline download and reading is supported on the mobile apps and through the Chrome web browser app.
Mobile app feature
![Literata typeface sample](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Literata_typeface_sample.svg)
At launch, introductory features included customizations such as selecting a font, font size, line spacing, and day/night reading modes, and the ability to pick up reading positions while using multiple devices.
On Android, the app's home screen shows recently opened books, as well as book recommendations and books
+1'd by friends.
The "My Library" section shows all the books grouped into three categories: "Purchases", "Samples" and "Uploads". Books can be "kept on device" for offline reading. Play Books features a
3D page turning effect, with an option to turn it off. It also allows users to turn pages using the device's volume controls. The website interface does not support different reading modes or any page turning effect.
Text can be read out loud using the device's text-to-speech engine or
Google Text-to-Speech
Speech Services is a screen reader application developed by Google for its Android operating system. It powers applications to read aloud (speak) the text on the screen with support for many languages. Text-to-Speech may be used by apps such as ...
, with an option for a "High-quality voice" in settings, although the feature requires a data connection to stream the voice data.
In September 2012, Google Play Books on Android was updated to feature a new
sepia
Sepia may refer to:
Biology
* ''Sepia'' (genus), a genus of cuttlefish
Color
* Sepia (color), a reddish-brown color
* Sepia tone, a photography technique
Music
* ''Sepia'', a 2001 album by Coco Mbassi
* ''Sepia'' (album) by Yu Takahashi
* " ...
reading mode, in addition to day and night modes; info cards for unknown written geographical locations and dictionary definitions; word or phrase translation; and support for highlighting text and writing notes. The sepia reading mode, text highlighting and note-taking features were eventually extended to the iOS app in August 2013.
In May 2013, Play Books started allowing users to upload
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
and
EPUB
EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...
files for free through the Play Books website, with support for up to 1,000 files. The Android app was updated in December 2013 with support for uploading files.
In October 2014, Play Books was updated to allow users to tap the center of the screen to enter a "skim" mode, where the page zooms out to allow users to easily slide between pages, in an effort to improve the reading experience for books that are typically not read cover-to-cover, such as non-fiction, cookbooks and textbooks.
In November 2015, Play Books was updated with features aimed at
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
fans, with the update adding a new vertical scrolling experience for comics in landscape mode, and new curated pages and recommendations for comics, with options for organizing by issue and volume.
In December 2015, Play Books was updated to include a "Night Light" feature that "gradually filters blue light from your screen, replacing it with a warm, amber light as the sun sets". Google claims that Night Light "automatically adapts to the amount of natural sunlight outside based on the time of day, giving you just the right temperature and brightness".
In July 2016, Play Books was updated with "Bubble Zoom", a
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
imaging feature that recognizes objects in comics and "expands the speech bubbles of a comic one-tap-at-a-time, making them super easy to read on your mobile device".
Books on Google Play
The
Google Play
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...
store serves as the primary source of ebooks for reading on Google Play Books. , over five million titles are available.
Select books, mainly textbooks, are available for rental. The rental period starts as soon as the payment is completed, not when the book is opened. Google Play also allows users to pre-order ebooks to have the title delivered automatically as soon as it's made available.
File formats
Originally, Google allowed publishers and authors to upload books in a number of formats, including
DOC
DOC, Doc, doc or DoC may refer to:
In film and television
* ''Doc'' (2001 TV series), a 2001–2004 PAX series
* ''Doc'' (1975 TV series), a 1975–1976 CBS sitcom
* "D.O.C." (''Lost''), a television episode
* ''Doc'' (film), a 1971 Wester ...
,
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
,
PDB,
MOBI Mobi or MOBI may refer to:
Companies
* Mobi (company), an American wireless provider
Computing
* .mobi, internet top domain name
* .mobi, a file extension of the deprecated Mobipocket e-book format
People
* Mobi Fehr (born 1994), American soc ...
,
EPUB
EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...
, and
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
. But in July 2013, support for all these formats except for PDF and EPUB were dropped.
, Google accepts EPUB versions 2.0.1 and 3.0.1. Both text and image-based PDFs are accepted when the EPUB format is not available, with the preference being for PDFs with a text layer.
For reading on
e-reader
An e-reader, also called an e-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals.
Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an e-read ...
s or third-party apps, some ebooks, but not all,
can be downloaded in the EPUB ("flowing text") or PDF ("original pages") formats. Google states on its support pages that the advantage EPUB has over PDF is that it allows the book's text to adjust to different screen sizes, and offers smaller file sizes.
Publishers have the option to enable
digital rights management
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...
(DRM) protection for the digital file download of ebooks. The DRM system used is the
Adobe Content Server
Adobe Content Server is software developed by Adobe Systems to add digital rights management to e-books. It is designed to protect and distribute Adobe e-books in PDF or EPUB format through Adobe Digital Editions, or applications and devices d ...
4. E-readers are required to support
Adobe Digital Editions
Adobe Digital Editions (abbreviated ADE) is an e-book reader software program from Adobe Systems, built initially (1.x version) using Adobe Flash. It is used for acquiring, managing, and reading e-books, digital newspapers, and other digital pub ...
, and Google notes on its support pages that "Books bought on Google Play won't work on
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. ...
devices."
Availability
Nations where available
= E-books
=
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam.
= Audiobooks
=
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam.
History of expansion
Google Play Books was launched Mexico in March 2013; Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Portugal in June 2013; South Africa, Switzerland, and Turkey in November 2013; Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela in December 2013; Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in November 2014; Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine in September 2014, and Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates in January 2016.
Reception
In a December 2010 review, Laura Miller of ''
Salon
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (P ...
'' wrote that the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
titles on the Google eBookstore were of a "lesser quality" than on competing services, writing that some titles "had obviously not been proofed and the scans of the original pages were difficult to read". Despite that, Miller found it interesting that public domain titles had functionality to view them either as a "scanned version - with the original type, page numbering and even library stamps and
marginalia
Marginalia (or apostils) are marks made in the margins of a book or other document. They may be scribbles, comments, glosses (annotations), critiques, doodles, drolleries, or illuminations.
Biblical manuscripts
Biblical manuscripts have ...
, basically photographs of the printed pages" and also as "searchable "flowing text," rendered by
optical character recognition
Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scen ...
". Miller also wrote that the eBookstore was not easy to search, "an irony considering that the Google empire was built on search". She criticized the
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
for being "poor" and seemingly "devised by people who know next to nothing about the book trade". She praised Google's decision to incorporate reader reviews from
Goodreads
Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and read ...
, writing that it "helps, as these are often more thoughtful than the average
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
reader review", though again criticizing the "related books" section for bad suggestions. She also praised that Google had formed partnerships with independent bookstores, writing that it is "a great way to support neighborhood bookstores and it also allows Google eBookstore customers to partake of the expertise of people whose life's work is connecting readers with the right books."
In a May 2014 review, Riley Dennis of ''MakeUseOf'' wrote that "Google Play has been expanding its reach to all forms of media recently, and Play Books is one section that has noticeably improved and is now a genuine contender to the eReading competition". Dennis praised the ability to upload personal ebooks in addition to buying them, writing that it makes Play Books "a great universal eReader". Furthermore, he complimented the mobile Android app, writing that "Play Books is a delight to read on, from the refreshingly simple interface to the customizable and smooth reading experience", and that the page-turning animation was "delightful", "realistic" and "smooth". While writing about different forms of customization options available, he noted that "the margins can't be changed", and also criticized the website interface for lacking several features that were present in the mobile app. Dennis concluded his review by writing: "Play Books is a solid eReading app, but it still has room for growth."
References
{{Ebooks
Play Books
Android (operating system) software
IOS software
Play Books
EPUB readers
2010 software
Books
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical ar ...
Textbook business
Book rental