That’s what an article in FutureBook is asking. The article points out how DRM is currently not interoperable between many devices. In addition, what happens in 5 year when devices change or if one jumps ship from one device to another.
Here’s where Google Editions comes in. Google Editions will be storing books in the cloud and people will read them on their browsers in their internet capable devices. The author, Tom Williams, says:
If I am committed to reading ebooks on a tablet device – and judging by sales of the iPad, millions more will be committed to this experience than the dedicated ereader experience – I could start buying my ebooks through Google editions when it launches. Because these books are stored in the cloud (ie on the internet, like web based mail stores individual emails) I can access them from any internet capable device, be it a reader, a tablet device or even a laptop: my ebooks suddenly become platform agnostic, shrugging their metaphorical shoulders at whatever shiny new device I choose to buy. Right now the experience of reading a book through my web browser is not great, but HTML 5 will quickly change that by producing a richer web experience. The signs already point in this cloud-based direction. Google’s Chrome operating system is designed for portable netbooks but it will, no doubt, also be able to power tablet devices at some point (just as Android is used to power the Nook). Chrome is, in essence, a browser and nothing else. It lets you connect to the internet where you can access your email and your documents in cloud-based applications. It will also let you access your cloud-based books but it will not let you download them.
So needing to always be connected to the Internet is an “advantage” now? Considering the size of ebooks, there seems to be no reason to have such a system, other than yet another DRM, and one that’s even more restrictive than the current ones.
Want to read an ebook on an airplane? Sorry but the plane needs to have Wifi, and you have to fork out $10 for access to it, more than the ebook itself costs to buy.
Or lets say you’re on the subway and there’s no coverage – the book then stops working until you get to a section that does have it. Not all areas outside have cell phone coverage either.
This is just fail, fail, fail! Ebooks have no need for a constant on-connection, and requiring it is just going to make things worse, not better. This sort of DRM is also limited to devices that support the platform, which means that the majority of todays dedicated ereader devices are already incompatible.
I agree, I don’t always have an internet connection. Subways, school-based networks locked up tighter than Fort Knox where one can’t use outside devices (this is very common in the education world) and cheapskate tendencies that make me reluctant to pay for airport wifi and the like…no. If I can’t store it on my own personal computer and transfer the actual file to the device I want to read it on, I am not buying it. That might change if ten years from now, free wifi blankets the entire globe, but that does not seem likely.
@Frode Aleksandersen, No. With Google Editions, you do NOT need to always connect to the internet. You can cache ebook content on your computer to read offline. Before HTML5, a browser uses its own way to cache internet content. The content developer cannot take advantage of this capability. Now, the new HTML5 has provided a standard for all browsers to cache content. Therefore, you can read Google Editions offline with any browser that supports HTML5.
The author seems ignorant of the fact that Amazon and Barnes & Noble are blanketing all available platforms with ebook reading apps. I can read my Kindle books on my Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, PC, Mac and Blackberry with Android support coming too. And Amazon stores my books “in the cloud” so I can easily download them to any of these devices.
@Aaron Pressman. Whether a company will win or not depends on its product quality and cost. I think Google has won in terms of cost. With Amazon and BN’s approach, they need to develop a new application for every new device. Google does not need to, because HTML 5 is a standard for all browsers.
For product quality, we do not know yet. If Google Editions can provide an excellent reading experience, Goolge will win the ebook war.
Frank – that’s a direct contradiction of the article:
“It will also let you access your cloud-based books but it will not let you download them.”
Having a cached copy means you download it. Allowing off-line caching is an improvement on such a scheme, but there’s still the question of whether it will let you cache multiple books at the same time, or even your entire library.
The plane example is also still a good starting point, since you’ll want to have your netbook/laptop/whatever powered off at some point – with a normal browser, you can’t then turn on the laptop on the plane and grab the books over the internet. You need the same functionality you have on a Kindle, where books can be delivered wirelessly to the device, but once that’s done you don’t have to worry about it ever again since it’s stored on the device itself.
@Aaron Pressman: I cannot read Kindle books on my ereader unless I first strip the DRM and then convert it to ePub.
Cache is not the same as download, but a cached ebook is also stored in your computer/device. You just need to connect to the internet once and cache the ebooks. Then you can read it any time anywhere without internet connection. Cache is commonly used by a browser for individule web pages, but Google will be the first to apply this technology for an entire ebook because it requires HTML 5, which is not even officially released yet.
Of course, you can cache multiple books at the same time. Its capacity will depend on your device.
@Piet: You can’t read Kindle books on your reader? Nothing new. I can’t watch HD-DVD movies on my Blu-ray player. I can’t run Mac software on my PC.
Maybe you should have bought an iPod or a laptop instead of a feature-crippled format-locked single-use device.
@article: I’m still waiting for someone to explain why HTML5 does things for ebooks that HTML 1.0 didn’t do. HTML 1.0 has italics, bold, paragraphs, and anchors. What else does a book need?
A lot of argument over a product that hasn’t shipped and nobody can get their hands on. What is this, a Sony PS3 website? 😉
Seems like Google is taking a page from Apple’s playbock, salting the media with hype long before anything factual is known.
That said, all this discussion is *still* about a different flavor of DRM. If I can’t download it, open it up in a text editor of my choice, and do anything I want with the file (for personal non-commercial use) then its stil DRM’ed.
And in the world of DRM lock-in to Google is no different than lock-in to Amazon, Apple, or Adobe.
So all we’re really hearig here is that in practical terms there will be a *fourth* ePub DRM flavor.
Amazon will love that.
Kobo books does this right now. You can buy books there and read them on any browser-enabled device. They also let you export the epub to read on literally any device.
I don’t see how keeping text in the browser is in any way a solution.
ditto on Kobo – my last several ebook purchases have been from Kobo specifically because I can read them on all 3 devices I use to read ebooks — a Sony Reader (still preferable for reading longer than 30 minutes), an iPad (better for night reading and getting books quickly)and a PC.
DensityDuck said:
“I’m still waiting for someone to explain why HTML5 does things for ebooks that HTML 1.0 didn’t do. HTML 1.0 has italics, bold, paragraphs, and anchors. What else does a book need?”
Spot on!! Ebooks are perfectly fine as basic HTML, zipped folders if you have illos and charts and other visual elements.
The only thing missing from HTML is the DRM…
Oh wait, I think that qualifies as a feature instead of a problem.