Competition for Amazon Bookstore? Maybe. It depends on how you look at it.

Amazon has gone Star Trek. Sort of.

Did you ever watch the TV show or any of the movies? All of them have these five inch by seven inch pads or electronic PADS. They seem to download stuff to, read them. Stacks of them in different colors were on Captain Picard's desk sometimes. 

Google's plans for many books in fact will be complimentary or if you look at it this way -- ALTERNATIVES. Amazon offers the Kibble.

It's a box that sort of looks like your kids' "Etch a Sketch," pad but it loads up your favorite eBook in the "kibble" format.

Google will be letting you read the books either as a PDF download or on line as a Web version. 

Considering the book publishing, and REALTORS destroy a lot of trees with millions of paper contracts, this is Google's way of going green as you won't have to buy the book anymore at your local book store or news stand. 

Good for SEO

There more than a few smart REALTORs out there. Some of them are my friends and clients. Colleagues like Bernice Ross who is a syndicated columnist at Inman News is sure to like this news as she can no doubt get her books out to more REALTORS who need them. 

-- bart