Google’s E-Books Store Finally Launches in UK, Australia and Canada

Brits, Aussies, Canadians: prepare to gorge on cheap (or even free) e-books. Though it’s taken a while, Google’s E-book Store has finally made it to the UK, Australia, and Canada, after a period of US exclusivity.

That means those with a Kindle or an Android handset (an Android app is already available, though version 2.1 or later is required) can choose from millions of e-books, plenty of which are free public domain classics.

Here’s Google blowing its own trumpet:

“Readers in the UK now have access to the world’s largest e-books collection, with hundreds of thousands of e-books for sale – from major UK publishers like Hachette, Random House and Penguin – as well as more than two million public domain e-books for free.”

So there you go, yet another way to read books. If you head to the Android Marketplace now, you’ll see a ‘Books’ section has been added, alongside the usual ‘Apps’ and ‘Games’ icons.

The books should work on phones, tablets, laptops, and e-readers. I severely questions the point of reading a book on a tiny smartphone screen, but then I’m clinging on to paperbacks for as long as I can manage.

So, who in the UK, Oz, and Canada is spending the day downloading the whole of Shakespeare’s back catalog later today then never read it? Let us know in the comments!