Google eBooks has been on the market 6 months, an amazing amount of time for the search engine to go without publicizing pretty much anything about the digital book service designed to tackle Amazon and Apple from behind in the e-reading market.
Last week, Google added dictionary, translation and search capabilities, showing that the gorilla had awoken from its e-reading slumber to add some key tools to the nascent service.
Now, Google said it has seen 2.5 million installations of its Google Books applications for iOS, Android and Chrome since December. That would be 5 million after a full year.
Considering that Amazon is now selling more digital books than paper titles (105 Kindle e-books have sold for every 100 print books) and that Apple has seen more than 100 million downloads from the iBookstore, I’m not impressed and you shouldn’t be either.
Increasingly, Google eBooks is looking like an also-ran, me-too and a folly by Google. And I use the service on tablets around my house. I just don’t think it has much chance versus Amazon or Apple at this stage. It’s a case of too little, too late.
In case you’re interested in the other stats, read on.
Google now offers more than 3 million free eBooks in the U.S., up from 2 million at launch. A perusal of the Best of the Free bookshelf in the Google eBookstore shows mostly classic works for free:
However, Google also said that more than 250 independent booksellers are selling Google eBooks today, up from 100 at launch. Finally, more than 7,000 publishers have signed up for eBooks, up from 5,000 since the launch half a year ago.
These are respectable increases to show momentum, but again consider the competition it’s fighting.
Need more Google eBooks news? Google said it will be popping into a handful of BookExpo America and related events in New York. Swing on by and check them out.