So what do you think, gang? Now that Google is about to showcase its name on Android phones, might Google-branded e-book readers pop up someday?
Right now Google is promoting a multiuse approach, with its backing of the Android platform for mobile phones. An adaptation of FBReader will work on the Android platform, and Stanza and others will most likely follow—a great safeguard, by the way, against Apple bullying developers.
But if the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle and the promising new Plastic Logic-based machine take off, who’s to say Google will ignore the dedicated reader hardware market? Ideally, however, it can do it in an open way and encourage independent developers to optimize their apps for the branded hardware, which a number of vendors actually could provide within specs.
Reminder/disclosure: I own a tiny speck of Google as a retirement investment.
