Google, master marketer, may be showing some signs of excessive spread. The company has launched its long-awaited Google Editions and also the next generation of its Nexus phone, and while supporters are trying hard to find great things to say about both, it seems clear to me that neither is fully baked.
Google Editions is an online bookstore that supports online reading in a browser rather than through the traditional e-reading applications. The platform has gotten early criticism for being amateurish, but I’d have to disagree; its navigation is different from that of Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but not worse. The thing I find hard to figure is the sense of the offering; what’s Google trying to do here?
On one hand, it seems pretty clear that ebook readers are a threat to Google because they aren’t web-enabled and thus dodge Google’s incumbency. If you buy an ebook from a Kindle or Nook or even from the company’s website through a browser, you’re dodging Google. But realistically Google can’t be a part of everything, and that’s the rub here. The experience for Editions is designed to be based around the browser. Though you can download ebooks in ePub or PDF form, transfer them to readers (like Nook) that support that format (using Adobe’s free Digital Editions software, and even read them with some of the PC apps (Nook for PC, for example), the process of getting an Editions book on a reader is considerably more complex than the process of getting the same book from the reader’s online library.
In all, Editions looks like a store in search of a reader, which leads to the second item in the Google news—the next-gen Nexus. This new phone isn’t being touted by Google as the re-invention of the smartphone market; in fact, the launch has been low-key. The only really distinct thing about the new Nexus S is the fact that it’s equipped with near-field communications (NFC) for use in retail as a substitute for a credit card. While the Nexus S will be available by the holidays (in Best Buy for example), and while it would support the Android application for Editions, it doesn’t seem to me that this is the justification for Editions. You can get Android apps for Kindle and Nook books, after all.
It seems more likely that Google is preparing Editions to support Android tablets, but it’s hard to see how even that mission is served in any distinct way. It’s not that Editions is bad or that the Nexus S isn’t capable, but that the effort of launching either of the two doesn’t seem to be aimed at a clear and valuable payoff. Google might be spreading itself too thin.