Google + Ebooks = ?

Yesterday, Google announced it's entrance into the ebook world. Not just the scanning and making available of older texts, but honest-to-goodness actual ebook sales. Of current books.

And I'm not (currently) that impressed.

Here's why.

The cloud. It's a fickle thing that requires having a connection if you want to read something. But what if there's a situation where no reliable connection is available (road trips, flights, or similar situations)?

Pricing. Some of the books that I've looked up are priced higher than what's available on the Nook or through Amazon. Offset by this are tons of free (scanned) texts for older books. Maybe it's a trade off, but it's a barrier for me to see any pronounced switching over.

A few benefits that I can see, though.

The cloud. It's a double edged sword to consider. At some point virtual "shelf-space" could become an issue on a restricted devices (that's why I went for a 64GB iPad when I weighed all of the options... an old lesson from my father "get as much hard drive as you can up front"). By storing all of the "books" off-device, then less space-burn when you get close to maxing out device-based storage. (But Barnes & Noble's Nook app sort of does the same thing - downloads a marer or place holder, but doesn't pull the full test down unless told to.)

"Free" books. Older books, anyway. I have (inherited) a large collection of books that are now out-of-print. If they are available electronically, then I might be able to read some of the older books [mostly paperback] without fear of accelerated deterioration carrying the copies around.

Verdict:
Too early to tell. The multi-platform, cross-syncing apps are a very big advantage (part of the reason why I have set up camp in the B&N corner). Product availablility appears to be there, but it's a pain to navigate (like the web search, it's by keyword. Enter a book title, you'll still get dozens of unrelated hits if the word sequence matches.). There is the ability to download the files and cross-import to other readers (which is time consuming, but better than I originally thought). I'm probably going to look at things a little more, but I don't anticipate changing over to Google for my ebooks yet.