Two companies have announced mobile book reader releases to capitalize on the publicity surrounding today’s launch of Amazon’s second Kindle device. Google is taking its Book Search to mobile devices while Plastic Logic is unveiling a reader which offers a larger screen.

Given that today’s high-profile launch of the new Kindle has been a poorly kept secret for several weeks, it’s no coincidence that rival firms are trying to hijack the publicity bandwagon. Google actually announced its new development on Thursday but several major newspapers have picked up on it today, likely because Kindle was in their diaries, while Plastic Logic waited till today to unveil deals with content providers.

The Google plan is a remarkably simple idea which, while not a Kindle killer, makes Amazon’s $359 price tag seem all the more expensive. Google has now made 1.5 million books (500,000 outside the US) available in a format suitable for viewing on the iPhone and Android devices.

To make the pages easier to read on the small screen, Google changed the way it digitized the books. On the regular online version, the images are simply scans of the pages. The new mobile versions use optical character recognition (OCR) to produce plain text versions so that devices can scale the print size more effectively.

Besides the often unpredictable success rate of OCR, the main drawback to this scheme is that it only covers public domain books, meaning few if any will be modern titles. It’s not yet known if Google will introduce a mobile edition of its paid Book Search scheme were users can access full-texts of books from participating publishers.

Meanwhile Plastic Logic has announced deals to offer electronic versions of leading newspapers such as USA Today and the Financial Times on its electronic reader. The device’s main selling point is a 10.7-inch screen, almost twice the size of that on the Kindle. The idea is that this will make it better suited to viewing newspaper and magazine pages. The device, aimed mainly at business users, will also allow owners to view documents such as PDF files and mark-up notations and changes on-screen.

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Entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 4:30 pm under Cell phones, Google.

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