Sony, Google Throw Down the Gauntlet at the Kindle

Sony and Google announced on Thursday a deal whereby 500,000 public domain books from Google's book digitization project will now be available for free for the Sony Reader Digital Book PRS-505 and PRS-700 devices.

Owners of the older PRS-500 readers are out of luck, however.

While this is a nice add for the two devices, which compete head-to-head with Amazon's Kindle 2, it loses something in the translation, at least in the U.S. Why? The lack of a wireless connection for the Sony Readers.

Of course, since the Kindle and Kindle 2 use Sprint's CDMA service, that means that Sony has an opportunity in GSM-only regions, and it needs to take advantage of that while it can.

To use the service, you need to install the Sony eBook Library software. Search the library and when you find something, load it onto your device.

The Kindle is sort of the iPod of digital e-book readers. They don't use the open ePub format, they definitely don't want you to buy books from somewhere else, and they sure are dominant.

Makes you wonder what would happen if Apple jumped in and started offering an e-book reader of its own, linked to iTunes. Of course, Steve Jobs feels that books are more or less dead.

In fact, here's a jab at Amazon.com in the press release. Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Business Division at Sony Electronics said (emphasis mine):

"We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible - from our store or others - whether that content is purchased, borrowed or free. Working with Google, we can offer book lovers another avenue for free books while still providing a seamless experience from our store."

Just remember, these are public domain books, so while you can find classics like "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and "Black Beauty," don't expect anything new.

In conjunction with this announcement, Sony lowered the price of the PRS-700 to $350, while the PRS-505 is $300.