Google, Inkling, and Amazon

Amazon May Seem Unstoppable, But Google Is Powering the Counterattack | Wired Business | Wired.com:

San Francisco-based Inkling is specifically shooting for Amazon’s book business. Founder and CEO Matt MacInnis observes that the Kindle isn’t especially well suited to the oversized, graphics-intensive layouts of many textbooks. Inkling seeks to overcome this limitation of traditional e-book formats through a layout engine specifically designed to re-envision textbooks for tablets, smartphones and the web. But elegant design doesn’t take you far if most online shoppers are going straight to Amazon to buy books. That’s why Inkling has developed an information architecture based on the concept of “cards.” Each of the books is divided into chapters, and each chapter is divided into cards. A card contains what amounts to one quantum of useful information. Cards themselves are viewable for free on a limited basis; readers can buy Inkling’s books by the chapter. Each card also has its own URL, which means Inkling’s cards are what Google indexes. Inkling is banking on the quality of the information in its cards to rise to the top of Google search results (and generate attention on social media) to get Inkling’s books noticed. People aren’t going to discover content through Inkling, MacInnis says. They’re going to discover Inkling through content.

Google Defeats Publishers Over Web Copyright in German Vote - Bloomberg: "Google Inc. (GOOG) and other news aggregators may continue to show short news items on their Internet sites without being required to pay, German lawmakers decided in a parliamentary vote today in a blow to publishers including Axel Springer AG (SPR) and Bertelsmann SE. A majority of lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition allowed companies such as Google to display “single words or very small text excerpts” referring to publishers’ websites at no cost. For content exceeding these limits, publishers retain the exclusive right of use, according to the bill. . . ."



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