Now you can Google-buy your ebooks

By now, we are pretty convinced that there are four prime contenders who can potentially rule the world, if it comes to that - Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

With Apple doing all it can to eliminate competition first in the entertainment industry and now with the iPad in the mobile computing sector, it remained to be seen how Google would hit back.

This week, it decided to.

The head of Google's strategic partner development, Chris Palma, said that the search engine giant would launch a new digital book store to sell ebooks and not just display them. You know what that means, right? Apple, Amazon and other ebook stores would be under direct threat from Google, which came under a lot of flak earlier because of its decision to scan millions of books worldwide and store them on servers for public viewing.

A Wall Street Journal report said the service - Google Editions - would be launched as early as next month or the month after that. The report said: "Google has been discussing its vision for distributing books online for several years and for months has been evangelising about its new service, called Google Editions.

The company is hoping to distinguish Google Editions in the marketplace by allowing users to access books from a broad range of websites using an array of devices, unlike rivals that are focused on proprietary devices and software."

It added: "Users will be able to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book- search service. It will also allow book retailers - even independent shops - to sell Google Editions on their own sites, giving partners the bulk of the revenue. The company would have copies on its servers for works it strikes agreements to sell. It is yet to be decided if the publishers or Google itself will set the price."