Google has another literature inspired Doodle today, and this one celebrates of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.
Dickens wrote about a realistic view of the daily life of Victorian England. His works are praised to this day for their wit, satire, and social commentary.
If you’re interested you can find his books on Feedbooks.
via Google
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Google launched the UK eBookstore today, but that wasn’t all they did. There’s also a new update to the Google Books Android app. The update brings a couple minor improvements, several bug fixes, and one or 2 major new features.
The one new feature that is probably the most important is the improved support for 7″ tablets. I can’t say that I see any difference, but then again I don’t have a 7″ tablet to check. Google also added better support for smaller screen (phones), including in-book search and a landscape mode for with reflowable text. You can also now +1 a book while reading, a feature which won’t matter once Google kills off gPlus (as they inevitably will).
You can find the updated app in the Android Market.
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They’re calling it the Chromezone, and it’s going to work something like the Apple spaces you can find in Best Buy. The real purpose of this space is to give potential customers a chance to finally see what a Chromebook looks like in person.
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A couple weeks ago I brought you news that Google might be planning to expand the Google eBookstore UK, CA, and Australia. At the time I posted I did not have any real proof of their intention other than that they were letting publishers set prices and sales conditions for the new markets.
Today I have something new to show you. One eagle-eyed reader has found a new job listing with Google Australia. It’s a temp position for a “Google eBooks Site Merchandiser”.
It looks to me like Google are hiring the staff for the Australian branch of the Google eBookstore. I can’t get a statement from Google on when they plan to launch down-under, but it should be clear now that they are going to. In fact, the temporary nature of this position argues that Google plan to launch soon, doesn’t it?
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News is breaking today that Google have signed a settlement agreement with La Martiniere, a French publisher. The exact terms haven;t been disclosed, but La Martiniere will allow Google to convert and sell ebooks on their behalf.
The agreement ends a long-running legal dispute between La Martiniere and Google over Google scanning books published by La Martiniere. La Martiniere sued in French court in 200, and Google was ordered in 2009 to pay the French publisher 300 thousand euros and stop scanning French works for its digital library project.
The interesting part is that it looks like Google got La Martiniere to agree to the standard publisher contract. Aside from that 2009 award, it appears that Google didn’t offer anything other than it gave everyone else. Unless there’s some detail not mentioned, what we have here isn’t a publisher winning out over Google. What really happened is that Google dragged another publisher into the 21st century against their will.
There’s something to be said for asking permission after the fact. Google seem to make it work. (Aside from the 300k euros, that is.)
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Google just announced that they’ve dropped $12.5 billion to buy a division of Motorola. Motorola Mobility is where Motorola developed all their android phones as well as the Xoom, a 10″ Android tablet running Honeycomb.
Given the patent situation and the fact that Motorola Mobility made Google’s flagship products, this purchase should come as no surprise. Now, I’m sure that Google bought MM for the IP, just like Larry Page said in a blog post. But the fact remains that they bought the maker of their flagship Android product. (No, seriously, that’s what it is.) The Xoom is the Android tablet that Google wanted everyone to make, and now Google will be making it.
Basically, Google just went from being an interested partner to being a direct competitor to all the Android hardware companies. I wonder how this affect other tablet makers? Oh, I doubt it will bother the makers of budget tablets, but the premium tablet makers (Asus, Acer, Toshiba) probably aren’t too happy right now.
But I have to say, this was a surprising way to solve the hardware fragmentation problem. I wonder if Google plan to become Apple and release a standard update for all their devices?
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Google have been killing off their older custom search engines for the past several months, and this week the dictionary search engine went up on the chopping block.
For those who never used it, there used to be a special page at Google .com/dictionary that you could use to look up definitions. It only pulled results from dictionary and thesaurus websites.
I’m surprised it hung around this long. I can’t tell you how many years it has been since I last used it. I’ve found it to be much faster to just google “define word”. That’s seven extra keystrokes vs waiting for another page to load.
Like the other redundant search engines, pretty much all of the functionality of the dictionary page can be found on the Google homepage. But if you’re pining for the lost page, there are alternatives. There are Chrome and Firefox plug-ins that specialize in definitions and you can add a dictionary specific search engine to the search window in the upper right corner of your browser.
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The Google Books website received a new interface this week, and I think it’s going to be a big improvement in usability.
They’re saying that it’s cleaner and more consistent (with other Google sites), and it is. It also uses more white space to separate the various components, but that unfortunately leaves less room for books.
On the other hand, I’d say that the new design is easier to use on the iPad. The extra does help make it easier to click on just the link I’m aiming at.
BTW, the new design won’t have any effect on mobile visitors; they’re redirected to the mobile site and it hadn’t been changed yet.
via Google
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When Google Books disappeared from iTunes last week some thought it was gone for good. But it’s back. Right now I’m looking at the update screen for my iPad. it’s telling me there’s a new update for the Google Books app.
Unfortunately, I can’t actually download it. I tried and for some reason it told me that the app wasn’t available. But I can look at the updated listing, and the screen shots don’t show the link to the Google eBookstore. Curiously enough, I can’t find the new listing through Googling “itunes google books”, so maybe it’s not quite ready yet.
I’m not sure what’s going on here, and probably no one else knows either.
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I just heard this morning that the Google Books app is no longer available through iTunes, and after some digging I can confirm this is true. Google Books is no longer listed in iTunes.
Curiously enough, the app running on my iPad still works. I fired it up and I can still read all the ebooks including the couple I bought. The app still has the link to the Google eBookstore website, too, which is probably why Apple pulled it.
Interesting. I really expected to see this sooner.
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