Google to break into the textbook market

Its latest foray into the education market, Google announced in July that it will begin to sell and rent digital textbooks through the Play store. The ebook market has been dominated by the likes of Amazon and Apple, with Amazon's Kindle-based textbooks maintining the lead in digital textbooks. While Google already features a few digital textbooks for purchase from smaller publishers, the new expansion is expected to create "a comprehensive catalog of higher education titles across science, mathematics, engineering, and more from all five major textbook publishers including Cengage, Wiley, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Macmillan." Following on the heel's of Amazon's textbook rental model, Google will also allow users to rent textbooks for six months at discounted rates. The press release includes a list of some of the new top titles, including Complete Works by Plato, Constitutional Law, and Principles of Data Integration. Like other books available through the Play store, users will be able to access the textbooks across web and mobile platforms, as well as using the search, notes, highlight, and lookup functions.