eBooks given extra push as Google adopts EPUB format

27 August 2009 2:23 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Following Sony's big ebook announcement on Tuesday with the launch of three new Readers, Google has stepped up the buzz surrounding digital paperbacks at the moment by announcing that it will be adopting the EPUB format for the 1m public domain books it has scanned so far.

In what will surely come as a welcomed move by Sony and other ebook makers, the search engine come book scanner will support the open standard backed by the IPF.

"Once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format," said Google in a blog post.

EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or "reflow") to these smaller screens.

"EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won't be tied to or locked into a particular device," informs Google playing on its "do no evil" company mantra.

Those worried that their current device doesn't support EPUB shouldn't worry. Google has confirmed it will still be making books available in the PDF format as well.

Via: booksearch.blogspot.com

Full tags

Gadgets, ebooks, Google, Sony