Google will start selling e-books

The BookExpo book fair in New York was unexpectedly visited by Google representatives. The NY Times reports that in the backroom negotiations they made it clear to publishers that they were going to present them with a way to make money by selling digital copies of books. In this case, Google will become a direct competitor of the online store Amazon.com, which promotes this line of business, including through the proprietary "reader" of Kindle e-books.

In the Google Books online store, users will be able to read up to 20% of the book’s content for free. There will also be links to other online stores where you can buy a paper copy of the book. In negotiations with publishers, Google has promised to give them the freedom to determine prices (Amazon sets prices independently, and sells many books at a loss to promote the platform).

The commercial Google service will be integrated into the Google Books service, in which more than 7 million books have already been scanned, and one and a half million of them are laid out in free access.
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I must say that this Google initiative is very similar to the methods for commercializing Youtube. This previously free video service will soon also receive paid content .