GizmoCrunch writes: The Google eBook ecosystem will be accessible to smartphones, tablets, PCs and even web browsers, leaving it open to the majority of the public unlike other alternative such as Amazon store’s eBooks which mainly run on the Amazon Kindle only.
The truth is actually the reverse. Amazon’s Kindle apps run on iPhones, iPads, Android phones and pads, PCs, Macs and other smart phones. Amazon’s advantage is that their technology is based on HTML and so reflows naturally on all platforms while Google’s PDF based technology deals poorly with reflow and so tends to require pan and scan reading on smaller devices.
In spite of using PDF for storage, Google Books runs inside browsers and so is supported on a few platforms that Amazon has not bothered to write Kindle apps for, like Linux desktops.
If Google had gone for EPUB instead they could have claimed the high ground on platform coverage, but as it is there is a difference between being able to read a book on a platform and being able to read a book comfortably on that platform.