Google Editions will attempt to dethrone Amazon's Kindle electronic reader from its place at the top. (Courtesy Amazon.com)

There’s been a lot of talk in the news media about e-books lately, and it’s obvious that electronics manufacturers believe the public is finally coming around to the idea of electronic readers. Sales seem to be doing well. There are new models from established players Amazon and Sony. And there are new entries coming to market from Plastic Logic, iRex, possibly Barnes & Noble and maybe even a coalition of publishers including Hearst, Meredith, Condé Nast and more.

I wrote a few months back about Google’s interest in e-books, but this week we’ve heard some more about their designs on the market.  Tony Bradley at PC World said that the store will be called Google Editions, and when it launches next year, it’ll have 500,000 books available for purchase. In addition, electronic books sold on the service will be able to be read on multiple different e-book readers and won’t be in a proprietary format, as some others are. Bradley said that publishers working with Google Editions will keep 63 percent of the sales. But Google would work with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, though books sold by that route give publishers only 45 percent of the take.

Books purchased via Google Editions will be able to be read on computers, as well. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer said in a Reuters interview earlier this month that his company won’t be developing a dedicated e-book device.

This may trump industry analyst Gartner’s Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies. If you read their comments, it says that one of the things holding e-book readers back at this stage is proprietary formats. Digital rights management issues are another, and I admit, I don’t know how Google Editions will handle that.

The kerfuffle over the Google Books settlement is still going on, and as Tom Krazit of CNET said, it’ll be November before a new settlement is proposed in court.

If you’re ready to curl up with a good article, take a look at this related material at HowStuffWorks.com:

How the Amazon Kindle Works
How Electronic Ink Works
How Google Works