News Report #4

Andrew Darcy
News Report #4
March 19, 2009

“Sony Reaches Deal to Share in Google’s E-Book Library”
New York Times
Published: March 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/technology/19sony.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Sony is trying to take down Amazon when it comes to e-books. In doing so, they joined the likes of Google to make a half million books to put on their Sony Reader to try to rival the Amazon Kindle. With Google’s help they may be taking the crown as the leader in E-books because Google currently has over seven million academic books and research library collections already scanned and ready to be loaded onto the Reader once their copyright expires. They can not upload current books because of copyright laws, but have put many older books whose copyrights have been expired. Sony joined forces with Google to try to get information to their readers at that fastest rate possible, while still expanding their already vast e-book library. Not only are they increasing their book count, they are jointly trying to get copyrighted books available on their Reader. This is currently difficult to do, but for the ones that they are unable to obtain, they are putting short little synopsis and excerpts from the books that are currently under copyright laws.

Sony is doing the right thing by teaming with Google. It seems to me and most others that teaming up with this internet search engine will only bring about good news because of how popular it is with the public. As one man said, “e-books are going to be the future of books”, and Sony is hopping on that train in a serious way. It is neat to think about how one book can become all books, but I feel this is a risky investment for any company to take on. I know I will always be a fan of picking up a book and flipping through the pages, but who knows maybe this will be the next big wave and Sony can be out ahead of the competition by getting involved in the early stages.