Will Google’s eBookstore Change the eBook Game?

Google plans to start selling digital books this summer in direct competition to Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble. Called Google Editions, this ebookstore will sell some portion of Google’s 12 million scanned books.

Although its bookstore already looks larger than any of its competitors, Google’s largest differentiator may be that once you buy a book, you can read it anywhere you have a browser.

Google doesn’t have eReader hardware like the others and really just wants as many people on as many platforms as possible to see their bookstore and buy their books. They’re going to be much more interested in getting those books out in as many formats as possible and will, as they’ve shown so far, gravitate to more open and/or widely used standards. This is good for Google and it’s good for consumers.

I don’t think there’s any question that this will revolutionize the ebook business as it were and force the likes of Amazon and Apple to revisit their DRM model that keeps books tied to the hardware.