Powell's and Alibris?
These 'partners' of Google are second-hand book dealers. They hold no rights, they don't even publish books. So I am not sure how they can be partners in this most interesting venture.
Google has begun flogging books to US customers with the launch today of the company’s rather flat-sounding ‘Google eBooks’ business. Last May the company confirmed it would enter the retail digital book biz. An online store dubbed ‘Google Editions’ was expected to follow in July this year. That didn’t materialise, however, …
A fair point. Here's another: having to keep Nook, Kindle, and Google readers on my phone eats up storage and cycles, and they all do the same thing... poorly. Google's doesn't even support landscape mode! Much prefer using Aldiko to read Calibre-converted epubs, legitimately or not.
Client reader lock-in will increasingly push consumers to explore "alternatives."
I've just downloaded the Hans Christian Andersens Wonderful Stories for Children and the second page states it was scanned by Google to make it seachable online.
What I like about the Google Book Store is that its the first ebook retailer that I know of which sells both DRM and non-DRM books, based on what the publishers require. Most obviously only sell crippled books, while a few small retailers sell non-crippled books.
That means I can buy all the non-DRM books I can get hold of while completely ignoring the DRM'd books and hopefully send a message to the publishers (OK, I admit those publishers are never going to get the message based on my buying habits, but it makes me feel better)