This move was more than necessary for Sony if it wanted to survive in the electronic readers market after Amazon launched the Kindle 2. This market, just like the smartphones market, seems to capture the attention of investors and consumers alike despite the economic crisis that has badly hurt other markets. 

 

All the books that Google has been scanning and converting into digital format during the past couple of years are now available for free download via Sony’s eBook Store. Sony’s is now only getting books whose copyrights have expired, which means that most of the new ebooks available on the Sony Reader are publications before 1923, The New York Times reported. 

 

Through this deal, Sony regains the top spot as the source with the most digital books. The Sony Reader library now has about 600,000 titles, significantly more than Amazon’s Kindle 250,000 titles. 

 

“We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible, and our partnership with Google is another step in that direction,” said Steve Haber, Sony’s president of the digital reading business division.

 

Google started scanning books in 2004 and since then it managed to turn about 7 million books into e-books. However, the books it can make available now are those whose copyrights have expired. 

 

The financial terms of the deal were not made public.