Google’s EPUB Embrace Challenges Kindle

“By adding support for EPUB downloads, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)
hopes to make these books more accessible as new e-readers,
smartphones, netbooks and other portable devices with small screens
that don’t readily render image-based PDF versions of the books
already scanned by the search giant.

“”EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that
allows the text to automatically conform (or “reflow”) to these
smaller screens. And because 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. We’ll also continue to make available
these books in the popular PDF format so you can see images of the
pages just as they appear in the printed book,” writes Brandon
Badger, product manager, at the Google Books blog.”

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