Amazon and Google race for readers

Reading digital versions of books isn't new to me -- or many of my colleagues. We've been downloading public-domain books (mostly from Project Gutenberg, which has been around seemingly forever) and reading them off PDAs and other digital devices for years. Now, it looks like mainstream companies like Amazon and Google have finally caught up. 

Amazon has let it be known that it isn't only going to make its ever-widening library of e-books available just for its Kindle reader (although it looks like it's about to announce the next Kindle on Monday), but will make that library available on a variety of mobile phones. Never behind the times, Google announced that it was making the tomes available on its Book Search service available for the iPhone and Android-based phones.

As Mike Elgan says, by making its books available on devices other than the Kindle, Amazon is keeping itself in the competition. And while there are a lot of predictions that Google has trumped Amazon's hand with its free books, we should keep in mind that -- at least at the moment -- Google and Amazon are offering readers products in what are essentially different markets.

Google's Book Search library consists largely of literature in the public domain (although Google's interpretation of what is in the public domain was challenged by the Author's Guild; the two organizations recently came to a $125 million settlement). Amazon, on the other hand, is selling today's bestsellers and other recent books (although certainly you can find, say, copies of Charles Dickens' works in there as well).

The former is (for now) free. The latter is more up-to-date.

Who will win? Or does there have to be a winner in this particular race? Perhaps the real winners will be readers, who will find a wider range of literature at their fingertips.