News just in that Google has bought eBook Technologies and its team to help bolster its own ebookstore.
eBook Technologies provided the hardware and software for reading ebooks, but it was never a hugely successful business, not being able to fight the might Amazon and Kindle.
On their website they now say:
“eBook Technologies, Inc. is excited to announce that we have been acquired by Google. Working together with Google will further our commitment to providing a first-class reading experience on emerging tablets, e-readers and other portable devices.”
This is an interesting development. Google already has its Android tablets which are perfectly capable ebook readers in their own right. However, there must be some patents of rights that eBook Technologies hold that were preventing Google from moving in the direction that it wanted to go. Or maybe it is just the expertise of the people that were working at eBook Technologies that Google was impressed by.
The Google search description for eBook Technologies was:
eBook Technologies provides the leading end-to-end electronic book platform offering a full range of eBook products and services.
ebooktechnologies.com/ – Cached – Similar
The site cache has already been updated so I cannot even see what they did before. There download page is still active though, it says:
“eBook Technologies Downloads.
USB Driver for ETI-2
The eBook USB Driver enables your ETI-2 to use the high-speed Internet connection on your computer to access the Online Bookshelf or Bookstore.
Download
eBook PublisherThe eBook Publisher is a content conversion and publishing tool for creating professionally formatted content.
Download
RB2ProjectRB2Project is a utility that can be used to take an unencrypted “.rb” file and convert it to either HTML markup for import into eBook Publisher or directly to a “.imp” file for viewing on the supported devices.”
Maybe that last part provides an insight into what Google is really planning – “a utility that can be used to take an unencrypted “.rb” file and convert it to either HTML markup”
At the moment pdf’s and other ebook formats are not very web friendly. Maybe there are simply some plans to convert ebooks and pdf’s into a better looking and more search friendly format for the web? This may change the way ebooks are read online, especially if it is a part of the Chrome or Android tablet package.
Also, the products page is still cached:
“ProductsThe eBook Technologies, Inc. (“ETI”) platform consists of four parts: electronic reading devices (eBook devices) plus their associated UI firmware technology, the “Online Bookshelf”, an Internet-based content sales and delivery system (the eBookstore), and eBook content conversion / publication tools.Content Conversion and Publication ToolsThe ETI eBook format is based on an industry standard XML-based markup format (the Open eBook Standard) that ETI founders helped to pioneer. This format is the source format used by most ebook reading systems (for example, Microsoft, Palm and MobiPocket).ETI offers a content creation and preview tool, to convert existing content and documents into the ETI eBook format. The software runs on Windows and Macintosh desktop systems and is capable of processing text, generic Open eBook texts and Microsoft Word files into device-specific ETI eBook titles. Automated scripts allow for daily, weekly or monthly download to ETI eBook devices as soon as the data is available from the content purveyor.A server-side component of the ETI publishing tool, provides pagination, compression and encryption functions. “
Source: Google cache for ebooktechnologies.com/products.htm
Whatever the master plan is, it is interesting news for ebook fans and Kindle alike!
