Google is getting ready to launch its own e-book store and challenge Apple and Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chris Palma, Google’s manager for strategic-partner development, announced the timetable for the launch of the company’s e-book store during an event at Random House’s Manhattan offices earlier today. Google Editions, as the new store will be called, will launch in late June or July.

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Google will allow book retailers to sell Google Editions on their own sites and, according to the Wall Street Journal’s report, “keep the bulk of the revenue.” Google, of course, also plans to highlight these e-books on its own book search engine. It’s important to note that Google is also still trying to win the right to distribute out-of-print books, but the Google Books Settlement that would give Google the rights to do so is still caught up in various legal challenges.

When we first heard about Google Editions last year, Google’s plan was to offer around half a million books at launch. At the time, Google also noted that it wants its books to be compatible with any device, whether that’s a laptop, phone or dedicated e-reader. Apple’s tablet wasn’t on the horizon back then, but chances are that Google will also want its books to be compatible with this new platform. Given that Google is already using the ePub standard, we can only hope that Google’s plan is to sell DRM-free ePub books.

Discuss

United States lawmakers have spent a year preparing draft legislation for a law that would define and limit privacy for advertisers and Internet companies. The legislation will govern methods of taking information from users online and using that information to target advertisements to them. On Tuesday, they will present the draft legislation.

The timing is good for such an announcement given the worry over, among other things, Facebook’s recent changes that have caused fresh worry over privacy.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, two of the representatives working on the bill, Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are posting the bill on their websites Tuesday. The plan is to accept feedback from readers for two months, then revise and submit it.

Elements of the draft include the following.

• Disclosure of what information is collected and how, how it is used and who it is shared with
• Opt-outs for consumers.
• Restrictions on collecting financial, medical, government ID information and that of children

Internet and advertising companies, meanwhile, argue that any such bill risks damaging the $23 billion online advertising market.

Discuss

Slightly ahead of schedule and to the surprise of many developers, Apple opened up the iPad store earlier today. As of now, there are already over 2,000 iPad apps available for instant download in the store. Some are iPad-only apps, but there is also a large number of universal iPad and iPhone apps that include versions for both devices.

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we are obviously very excited about the launch of the iPad store and have been scouring the App Store for the most interesting apps. Here are some of our favorites apps so far.

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One caveat here, of course, is that we haven’t been able to test any of these apps. We plan to test them all over the next few weeks, but for now, our recommendations are mostly based on the reputation of the developers and the screenshots that are available in the App Store.

News

Wall Street Journal (free download; $17.99/month subscription)

We want to test this app, if only to see the Wall Street Journal’s subscription model in action. While the app will feature some free articles, full access will come at a hefty price: $17.99 a month. The design is very close to a standard newspaper layout.

New York Times Editor’s Choice (free)

There is no full-blown iPad app for the New York Times in the store yet, so for now, this is the closest we will come to seeing the NYTimes’ strategy for the iPad. This app will only feature a selection of stories.

Instapaper Pro ($4.99)

Instapaper is a long-time favorite of the RWW team. A bookmarklet or browser plugin lets you save the text of any newspaper article or blog post you find online and lets you read it offline in a distraction-free, text-centric view. The iPad app is basically a bigger version of the iPhone app (with the necessary layout changes). That’s really all it takes to make us want to buy this app (though if you already own Instapaper Pro for the iPhone, this is a free upgrade that’s probably already on your computer).

NetNewsWire ($9.99)

At $9.99, NetNewsWire, a very popular feed reader for the Mac and iPhone, is rather expensive. On the other hand, reading feeds on the large iPad screen is surely going to be more fun than on the iPhone. NetNewsWire syncs with your Google Reader account.

Productivity

Apple’s iWork Apps ($30)

We assume that other developers will soon offer similar office suites for the iPad, but for now, Apple’s own iWork suite looks like a winner to us. Being able to do Keynote presentations from the iPad will surely win over quite a few iPad skeptics who don’t think that the device will be suitable for productivity apps.

Roambi (free)

We really liked the Roambi iPhone app when it was released in early 2009. This service allows business users to connect and manipulate sales data while on road (including Salesforce.com integration. On the iPhone, this was already a very visual app and judging from the screenshots, the iPad app will be even prettier and – we hope – even more functional.

Things for iPad ($19.99)

Things is a great to-do list app with a focus on the Getting Things Done methodology. It’s a perennial favorite on the Mac and iPhone and the new iPad app looks like a winner as well. The additional screen estate makes it much easier to switch between lists and move items around, for example.

Currently missing from the iPad in the to-do list category are Todo for iPad and OmniFocus for iPad. Maybe these will come in a later update before Saturday.

Twitter

Twitterific for iPad (free)

Twitterific was an early favorite on the iPhone, though the latest version of Tweetie stole some of the Twitterific’s user base. Tweetie hasn’t made an appearance in the App Store yet, but Twitterific is already getting a lot of positive press and the screenshots in the App Store definitely make it look like the must-have Twitter app for the iPad

Streaming Video

Netflix (free download; monthly subscription)

Earlier this morning, we weren’t sure if a streaming video app from Netflix was just an April Fool’s joke or real. Well – now we know and this looks like it could be one of the killer apps for the iPad. After all, if the iPad is really a device for surfing the Internet on the couch, what better way to compliment that by just using it to watch TV shows and movies on the couch, too.

ABC Player (free)

Speaking of watching TV shows. Thanks to the ABC app, you can now catch up on the latest (and last) episodes of Lost without having to turn on your TV.

Head over to the next page for our favorite music, blogging, weather and star-gazing apps.

Investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs is more or less giving up on Google’s Nexus One.  A note Goldman Sachs published this week indicates that it’s cut its 2010 sales forecast by a whopping 71.4 percent.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the note stated, "We previously estimated that Google might sell 3.5 mn Nexus One units in 2010."  Now, after seeing some data from Flurry, "We forecast that Google sells 1.0 mn Nexus One units in FY2010 . . ."

Goldman Sachs doesn’t have much confidence that Google will be more successful in the future, either.  The firm believes Google will sell additional devices as it "rolls out a second Nexus handset, markets it more aggressively, and makes it available offline," but nothing like 3.5 million was mentioned.

Instead, Goldman Sachs predicted "that Google sells 2 mn handsets per year in 2011 and future years."

This is fairly bad news for the search giant, given that the Nexus One was supposed to make so much of a splash.  The online-only sales model and lack of advertising may have been meant to save Google huge amounts of money, too.

The Wall Street Journal has the Blogosphere abuzz with rumors of Google testing a new set-top box with Dish Network, which would allow people to search television and online video content like YouTube. Google has given the usual "we don’t comment on rumor or speculation" statement on the subject.

According to the WSJ, only a small number of Google employees and their families are testing the box, which runs on Google software (Android is implied), and lets users create personalized lineups of shows. The testing has reportedly been going on since last year. Aside from these things, the details are sketchy at best, which can only mean one thing: let the wild speculation commence.

Assuming that this service ever comes to fruition, it could open up a lot of new opportunities for Google to dominate or at least heavily compete in areas in which it isn’t dominating already. Rather than doing too much speculation myself, allow me to just list some questions and open this up for discussion:

- What if Google gets exclusive deals with Dish Network as well as other major satellite and cable providers? Google TV Ads already has deals in place to provide ads on close to a hundred cable networks.

- What if Google makes more deals to boost its movie rental selection on YouTube? How big of a player would that make YouTube in the movie rental space? This will be something to keep an eye on with or without this box as Internet-ready TVs permeate the mainstream.

- Will Yahoo and Bing be looking at opportunities like the Google/Dish Network box? Are they already?

- What would widespread integration of web search and television mean for TV advertising?

In the not-too-distant future, we may start to really see TV advertising getting more targeted, which has long been the medium’s biggest downfall. People often record shows simply so they don’t have to watch the commercials. What if the ads were targeted at the individuals watching the TV? What if they were relevant? Search advertising paved the way for this kind of relevancy, and may just be a key to the future of TV advertising in a world where viewers want their programming on demand.

There I go off on that speculation. This all sounds good in theory, but a lot of puzzle pieces have to fall in place, and a lot of stars have to align for this to become a reality. Deals must be made, and money must be spent. That’s not to say the concept is far-fetched.

Consider that advertisers are finding online to be a better option than even the super bowl in some cases. This past Super Bowl, Pepsi skipped a TV spot for the first time in 23 years. TV is going to have to adapt.

Tell us what you think.

In the continuing effort to stop the bleeding, newspapers continue to try new ways to recover some losses and stop giving away all of their content for free. As online advertising has not proven sufficient to fully cover costs, some publishers, such as the Wall Street Journal, have turned to pay walls.

A new trend, however, seems to have taken hold – charging for a mobile app. The Washington Post has joined The Guardian in charging for its iPhone app, according to an article this morning in Paid Content.

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The Washington Post iPhone app will cost $1.99 for 12 months of mobile access to the paper’s content, which will include offline reading. The Guardian recently announced that it had sold 101,457 downloads of its iPhone app, which, at $3.99 a pop, means over $400,000 for the British paper.

The interesting distinction to note here is that the Washington Post’s app is more like a newspaper subscription of old. You aren’t paying a one-time fee for the app, you’re paying for a year’s use, meaning if you like the content and want continued access, it’s going to see another $1.99 from you in a year.

When you compare these sorts of numbers to the 35 subscribers to Newsday, the future might look brighter for newspapers. We’re thinking that mobile users are used to paying small fees for quality applications and, while they could use their mobile browser to visit the free website, they’ll likely pay the two bucks to see content tailored to the mobile platform instead.

CNN, as Paid Content points out, takes a similar approach, charging for its iPhone application, but its charge is a one-time fee. Offering an app as a timed subscription is a bit of a twist, but mobile may be just the environment to try out this sort of payment model.

The Washington Post iPhone app will be available for purchase today, but was not up by the time of this article.

Discuss

Google is rumored to be working on a Facebook/Twitter-like feature for Gmail. According to the Wall Street Journal, who cites "people familiar with the matter", the feature, which would "make it easier and faster" to share status updates may launch as soon as this week.

As I’ve written about a number of times, Google is really one big social network with a bunch of features, and integration is the key to harnessing that social power. A product like this could be just the ticket, because according to these same sources, it would integrate content shared through YouTube and Picasa. Who knows what else could be worked in?

Gmail currently has status updates of a sort. In the chat section, it has a menu of your contacts who also use Google, and shows their current status of they have one set. You can set one easily at any time.

Google has not yet responded to requests for comments, but if we learn more, we will keep you updated.

If Gmail offers its own Facebook/Twitter-style timeline, would you use it? Should Facebook and Twitter be worried? Share your thoughts.
 

Related Articles:

> Google Luring More Account Users with New News Feature?

> Is Google Bad at Social Media or Really, Really Good at it?

> Is Gmail Google’s Real Social Network?

Google is rumored to be working on a Facebook/Twitter-like feature for Gmail. According to the Wall Street Journal, who cites "people familiar with the matter", the feature, which would "make it easier and faster" to share status updates may launch as soon as this week.

As I’ve written about a number of times, Google is really one big social network with a bunch of features, and integration is the key to harnessing that social power. A product like this could be just the ticket, because according to these same sources, it would integrate content shared through YouTube and Picasa. Who knows what else could be worked in?

Gmail currently has status updates of a sort. In the chat section, it has a menu of your contacts who also use Google, and shows their current status of they have one set. You can set one easily at any time.

Google has not yet responded to requests for comments, but if we learn more, we will keep you updated.

If Gmail offers its own Facebook/Twitter-style timeline, would you use it? Should Facebook and Twitter be worried? Share your thoughts.
 

Related Articles:

> Google Luring More Account Users with New News Feature?

> Is Google Bad at Social Media or Really, Really Good at it?

> Is Gmail Google’s Real Social Network?

Sergey Brin and Larry Page are going to become much closer to their financial advisors over the next five years.  Google disclosed in a regulatory filing late last week that the cofounders each intend to sell about 5 million shares of the company’s stock during that period of time.

To address one possible concern: This is no way signals that Brin and Page are abandoning Google.  Even after the 10 million shares are sold, the pair will still own 47.7 million shares between them, so it’s not like they’re cutting all ties and going home.

Also, even though their voting stake will be reduced from 59 percent to 48 percent due to this move, Eric Schmidt controls another 10 percent, so there’s no danger of the three Google execs getting overthrown.

Still, the development is a big deal.  Miguel Helft calculated, "The sales, if completed, would provide each of the founders $2.75 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $550.01."

Google’s stock is down 1.15 percent so far this morning.  The Dow and Nasdaq are up 0.71 percent and 0.58 percent, respectively.

Related Articles:

> Wall Street Turns Nose Up At Google Earnings Report

> Analysts Give Google Thumbs Up For Diversifying

> Nexus One Sales Of 5-6 Million Units Forecast

Google may try to continue with operations in China, even if it shuts its search engine down due to censorship. You must remember that Google is much, much more than just a search engine, and the censoring search results doesn’t necessarily come into play in all other aspects of its business.

According to the New York Times, Google will be holding talks with Chinese government officials soon, which will likely determine the fate of Google’s operations in the country, and to what (if any) extent those operations will continue to exist.

"In most countries, Google draws the majority of its revenue from ads that appear on its search engine, but the No. 1 source of revenue in China comes from ads that Chinese companies place on Google’s sites in the United States," reports Miguel Helft with the Times. "A person knowledgeable about Google’s business in China said ads that run on a network of Chinese Web sites are the company’s second-largest source of revenue in the country. Google can retain both of those if it is allowed to keep a sales force and advertising network there."

The question is, is the Google China situation going to be an all or nothing scenario? We will probably know soon enough if said talks get underway (according to the Times they will be in the coming days and weeks).

On a related note, the Wall Street Journal has spotted that Google is showing ads on search results related to the situation that point to the company’s official blog post that announced its decision to stop censoring search results in China. I guess that’s the best way to make sure the true source turns up no matter what combination of related keywords are used to search for information on the matter (I wonder what that says about the SEO vs PPC debate)?

On yet another related note, security Vendor F-Secure says that the cyber attacks that kicked this whole thing into motion are now targeting United States defense contractors ( Via NetworkWorld). The firm says malicious PDFs under the guise of official Department of Defense documents were sent to them.

Related Articles:

> China Responds To Google Situation

> Baidu’s Stock Soars Following China News

> Google May Quit China

Update: The Wall Street Journal is running a piece from Google CEO Eric Schmidt on how Google can help newspapers. It’s an interesting read.

Original Article: Google has created a new web crawler specifically for Google News. What this means is that publishers who do not want Google News to index their content can more easily control that. That also applies to publishers who don’t wish to completely cut out indexing, but wish to limit/restrict certain elements of their content from being indexed.

Google offers this new crawler at a time when Google’s relationship with online news is a heavy focus of discussion throughout the industry, with the FTC’s meeting of the media minds taking place. This week Google already announced some changes to how it handles paid content (by offering a five-article limit for the "first click free" plan). Now the company appears to be further extending its olive branch to concerned publishers (whether or not that will be enough is another discussion).

In the past, publishers have been able to block Google from content via robots.txt and the Robots Extension Protocol (REP). They have also been able to keep content out of Google News and stay in Google Search, by using a contact form provided by Google. Now, Google is making it so publishers don’t even have to contact them.

"Now, with the news-specific crawler, if a publisher wants to opt out of Google News, they don’t even have to contact us – they can put instructions just for user-agent Googlebot-News in the same robots.txt file they have today," says Google News Senior Business Product Manager Josh Cohen. "In addition, once this change is fully in place, it will allow publishers to do more than just allow/disallow access to Google News. They’ll also be able to apply the full range of REP directives just to Google News. Want to block images from Google News, but not from Web Search? Go ahead. Want to include snippets in Google News, but not in Web Search? Feel free. All this will soon be possible with the same standard protocol that is REP."

"While this means even more control for publishers, the effect of opting out of News is the same as it’s always been," says Cohen. "It means that content won’t be in Google News or in the parts of Google that are powered by the News index. For example, if a publisher opts out of Google News, but stays in Web Search, their content will still show up as natural web search results, but they won’t appear in the block of news results that sometimes shows up in Web Search, called Universal search, since those come from the Google News index."

Cohen says Google News users shouldn’t notice any difference in their experience with the service. It will be interesting to see the reaction from disgruntled publishers, and whether or not this will make any significant difference in how they view Google News.

Related Articles:

> Google Changes How it Handles Paid Content

> Minds of the Media Gather to Discuss Future of News

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

> Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?

As you may know, Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp., is saying he may block search engines from accessing the organization’s content. He expressed this notion in a recent interview.

If Murdoch were to act upon this, it would mean theoretically that you would no longer be able to find Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc. content on Google. Of course that would be in a world where scraped content isn’t frequently crawled by search engines.

If Murdoch were to pull all of the original content, he would risk all of his content just being found on other sites through Google (or Yahoo or Bing or wherever). The reality is that illegal scraping will continue to exist, and search engines aren’t perfect. There is a great chance that they will still crawl the content, without even knowing it was originally produced by News Corp. properties. With News Corp.’s content in the search engines, at least the engines will be able to place that content higher in results where it would be more likley to drown out the scraped versions.

This week, a Google spokesman told Emma Barnett at the Telegraph, "Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute."

and…

"If publishers want their content to be removed from Google News specifically all they need to do is tell us."

So in other words, Google is fine with Murdoch pulling out. News Corp.’s the one that stands to lose more from that. Experian Hitwise shared some rather interesting data with WebProNews:

- On a weekly basis Google and Google news are the top traffic providers for WSJ.com account for over 25% of WSJ.com’s traffic. 
 
- According to Experian Hitwise data, over 44% of WSJ.com visitors coming from Google are "new" users who haven’t visited the domain in the last 30 days.

- Twitter and Facebook sent 4% of US visits to News and Media sites in October 2009. (via @Hitwise_US)

It’s interesting to look at the above graphs and note that WSJ.com is getting considerably more traffic from Google and Google news than in years past. It will also be interesting to see if Murdoch goes through with pulling content from Google.

As it stands right now, it is still easy to go to Google News and find content from the Wall Street Journal. If that and other News Corp.- owned publications are removed, that can only mean increased traffic for similar sites.

Related Articles:

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

> Murdoch Says Newspapers Must Charge For Online Content

> Obvious: People Don’t Want to Pay for Online News

> Google Trying to Differentiate Between Blogs and News?

> Can SEO Help Save the Publishing Industry?

> Reuters Happy to Take Traffic the AP Doesn’t Want

The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about the evolution of communication technology, chronicling the rise and alleged fall of email to social media. "Email no longer rules," the title reads.

Do you agree that email no longer rules? Tell us why or why not.

"We all still use email, of course," says Jessica E. Vascellaro, the author of the piece. "But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun."

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t all social networks also require logging on to use? Sure, you can set them up to remember your info so you don’t have to log-in every time, but the same could be said for most email services. That’s beside the point though.

It’s fun to look at how communication has evolved, and it’s easy to declare the old medium dead (although to be fair, Vascellaro didn’t exactly go that far). It’s just not the case.

WebProNews recently ran an article about how social media will not replace search, despite plenty of mutterings to the contrary. I will go ahead and declare the same thing about email. Social media will not replace email. Just as it did with search, it may replace it in some (even many) instances, but there is room for both forms of communication. In fact, they do a pretty good job of complimenting each other (for better or for worse).

Reasons Email Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon

1. People still send hand-written letters via snail mail, even though they could instead make a phone call, send an email, text message, or status update.

2. Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address. Some are starting to integrate social media into this process (through things like Facebook Connect), but that is still a very small fraction, and they typically still allow for email information as well.

3. Email notifies you of updates from all social networks you are a part of (provided your settings are set up that way).

4. We haven’t seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really is the next big thing and will catch on on a large scale.

5. Email is universal, and social networks are not. Nearly everybody on the web (while there are no doubt some exceptions) has an email address. Many places of employment give employees email addresses when they begin working there. Meanwhile, a great deal of them are banning workers from even accessing social networks.

6. There are plenty of people who have no interest in joining social networks. Frequent news stories about security, privacy, and reputation issues do not help convince them.

7. Email is still improving. It hasn’t screeched to a halt with the rise of social media. There is still innovation going on, and integration with social media. Look at how Google is constantly adding new features to Gmail. Look at the new Yahoo Mail.

8. Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email. Never mind that they update users about community-driven happenings via email. MySpace (still one of the biggest social networks) even launched its own email service recently.

9. More social media use means more email use. Look at these recent findings from Nielsen. The people consuming the largest amount of social media are also the people consuming the largest amount of email.

10. As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well, as many companies continue to struggle to find the right social media strategy to suit their needs.

Email Marketing

Let’s expand on that last one a bit. There have been a significant number of studies released in recent memory, indicating that email marketing is doing quite well. Epsilon shared some findings about how email marketing is driving offline purchases. The same firm also found that email open rates increased for the fourth quarter in a row (up 18% YoY according to the most recent study). Forrester Consulting and ExactTarget found that email marketing is the most popular channel for consumers. Earlier this year, Forrester Research reported that email marketing in the U.S. alone was expected to reach $2 billion by 2014.

Is the email landscape changing? Yes, without a doubt. Social media has become a very large part of the online lives for many Internet users. Earlier this year, social sites were even said to have surpassed email in usage. That said, Facebook has come significantly close to matching Google in terms of unique visitors, but that doesn’t make Google any less important does it? The two can co-exist, and so can email and social media. They are co-existing.

Email marketers are facing new challenges with an increasingly social and mobile web. For tips on embracing this, check out our coverage of a related session from the recent Shop.org summit.

Do you think social networks will replace email? Share your thoughts here.

Facebook is getting ready to open its stream up to third-party developers, which will allow for a ton of new Facebook-related applications, that won’t have to be used from within Facebook. According to the Wall Street Journal, developers will be able to access photos, videos, notes, and comments from the Facebook Stream with users’ permission.

This is one area where Twitter has excelled, and Facebook likely knows this and does not want to risk losing users to the more open network. In fact, the WSJ’s sources say that Facebook is looking to build user loyalty with this move.

Twitter’s APIs have allowed for third-party developers to create numerous useful apps like TweetDeck, and our own Twellow that enrich the user experience with Twitter, making it ultimately more useful. Now we can expect a similar scenario with Facebook.

Developers will reportedly not be charged, and more details should emerge today, as Facebook is expected to discuss the news at a developer event in Palo Alto.

It’s going to be really interesting to see the types of applications that developers come up with. The move is sure to take Facebook up another several notches in user engagement. For those who already spend a tremendous amount of time interacting through the social network, more ways to do so will only solidify Facebook as the leader in social networking.