Sony Reader v. Amazon Kindle: the next round

The e-book market is still up for grabs. And in a sign that Sony is far from ready to let Amazon get a lock on the market, yesterday it announced a deal with Google to include in its eBook Store over 500,000 public domain books scanned by the search company.

That means that while the Amazon Kindle allows readers to select for purchase from among 245,000-plus books (in addition to assorted newspapers, magazines, and blog content), the Sony Reader will now offer more than 600,000 book titles.

The big difference, however, is that many of the Sony Reader titles will be those books in the public domain and not more recent releases. In that area the Kindle will still have the edge.

But perhaps the point most significantly made by Sony's announcement is the one spelled out by Information Week: "E-books and the publishing industry may actually have a future."