The Wall Street Journal reports today that Google is about to start selling e-books this summer. Google’s new venture, Google Editions, was announced by Chris Palma, manager for strategic-partner development at a panel called “The Book on Google: Is the Future of Publishing in the Cloud?”, sponsored by the Book Industry Study Group at Random House’s New York offices.

The WSJ reports that Google intends to differentiate itself from other e-readers such as Kindle by permitting users to access books from a range of websites on a range of different devices, possibly even including the iPad and Kindle.

Google’s intention is that customers will be able to buy digital copies of books that they find via its book search. According to the WSJ, no publishers have publically committed to the scheme so far, although they do have a very encouraging quote from vice president of global business development at Oxford University Press, Evan Schnittman, saying, “This levels the playing field. And as a publisher, what I like is that I won’t have to think about audiences based on devices. This is an electronic product that consumers can get anywhere as long as they have a Google account.”

By Maura Sutton, iPadForums.net
Source: Google to Launch Digital Books by Early Summer - WSJ.com

It is nice to know that Google will start selling e-books already. A lot of enthusiast are really waiting for this to come and they are already waiting for so long.

Didn't they start scanning every book ever published a bunch of years ago? There are a bunch of books I'd love to get that aren't available yet from the other merchants. The ability to search with phrases would be very cool too if they could do that.

It was inevitable, probably. Google says it is getting into the e-book business, according to BBC News, with plans to open a Web-based store for electronic books this year called Google Editions. I am waiting for it...