Friday, March 20, 2009

Begun, the Ebook Wars Have

So you thought it was all about the Kindle did you? No respect for the Sony Reader? Well, Sony just tagged up with Google, embraced the idea of an open platform, and launched a double drop-kick at Amazon. You can now read Google's public domain library on your Sony. And they've dropped the price a bit.

Yeah, both devices are still too expensive for me. And yeah, while Sony now has more titles available, Amazon has most of the new titles. But what does all this competition mean? Who is going to win?

Us, or at least those of us who would like to see a good, affordable, ebook device that can let us read just about any book ever published.

Disclaimer -- I love dead-tree books as much as the next guy. They are beautiful, even the cheap paperbacks. I live in a small space surrounded by thousands of them. But I do most of my reading these days on a train. This week I've been lugging around a three pound tome. A lightweight device that can give me a library of books sounds pretty attractive right now.

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