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Google Play Books

Apple has iBooks, and Android has Google Play Books. Google Play Books is an app that allows you to read the latest books, comics and textbooks on your mobile device or computer. You can even read your ebooks offline!

Google Play Books used to be called Google eBooks. The distributor service, which Google claims is the largest in the world, facilitates downloads and purchases of millions of ebooks. The app also has the capacity to sync libraries between multiple devices. However, you do need a Google account in order to use the service.

But why not have a Google account? Google accounts are all encompassing, covering Gmail (by far the best email service in our humble opinion), Google+, YouTube and many other services. You even need a Google account before you can write a Google review of a business!

For those who do not know, Google+ is a social media Website, an alternative to Facebook or Instagram. Users can upload photos, participate in groups (called hang outs) and connect with each other. YouTube is a service that lets users upload their own videos, which is very popular for all those fail compilations, banned funny commercials and homemade cat videos.

But to get back to the focus of the present short discussion, Google Play Books offers different kinds of ebooks. Depending on the DRM protection and software, ebooks acquired from Google Play Books can or cannot be transferred to Kindle or iBooks. Similarly, books can be read online using any Web browser, as long as JavaScript is enabled (JavaScript is enabled by default on most computers). And as previously mentioned, books can also be read offline.

Back in 2011, the predecessor of Google Play Books had already partnered with over 7,000 publishers and over three million free ebooks were available online. Currently, purchase of books is in place in sixty-five countries.

Many different opinions have been expressed by users of the ebookstore. Some praise it as being the world’s largest provider of ebooks, but others decry the low quality of some of the titles. Interestingly, the store allows to see some printed books as they are, with annotations made on margins and even library stamps, keeping the original font, line spacing and print style as is. But, regardless of personal opinions about the distributor service, Google Play Books remains a good alternative for buying and downloading ebooks for free.