ort personal history, 1998)

2005 > Smartphones or ebook readers?

Can ebook readers like Sony Reader and Kindle really compete with
cellphones and smartphones? Will people prefer reading on mobile
handsets like the iPhone 3G (with its Stanza Reader) or the T-Mobile G1
(with Google's platform Android and its reader), or will they prefer
using ebook readers to get a larger screen? Or is there a market for
both smartphones and ebook readers? These are some fascinating
questions for the following years.

April 2005 > The ePub format

In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum became the International Digital
Publishing Forum (IDPF). The OeB format was replaced with the ePub
format (ePub standing for "electronic publication") as a global
standard for ebooks. More and more digital books are in ePub format,
widely used by publishers to distribute their ebooks, because it is
designed for reflowable content, meaning that the text display can be
optimized for the particular display device used by the reader:
computer, smartphone, ebook reader, large screen, medium screen, small
screen. The format is meant to function as a single format that
publishers and conversion houses can use in-house, as well as for
distribution and sale. The PDF files created with recent versions of
Adobe Acrobat are compatible with the ePub format.

May 2005 > Google Print The beta version of Google Print went live in
May 2005. In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google
Print as a project aimed at publishers, for internet users to be able
to see excerpts from their books and order them online. In December
2004, Google launched the second part of Google Print as a project
intended for libraries, to build up a digital library of 15 million
books by digitizing the collections of main partner libraries,
beginning with the universities of Michigan (7 million books), Harvard,
Stanford and Oxford, and the New York Public Library. The planned cost
in 2004 was an average of US $10 per book, and a total budget of $150
to $200 million for ten years. In August 2005, Google Print was stopped
until further notice because of lawsuits filed by associations of
authors and publishers for copyright infringement.

August 2006 > Google Books

The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of Google Books.
Google Books has provided the full text for public domain books and has
offered excerpts from books digitized by Google in the participating
librari