Google Books

Ten million books, from libraries and collections all over the world, all of them scanned, digitized, and searchable- and in the case of those in the public domain, made available for anyone to download and read.

That is Google Books now, and whatever you may think of the controversy involving lawsuits filed by copyright holders, the goal of preserving printed volumes in digital form for future generations of readers and researchers is commendable--and the technology that makes it happen is impressive.

Unlike Google's biggest competitors, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which rely heavily on restrictive DRM, Google's store will not be device-specific--allowing for e-books purchased through Google Editions to be read on the far greater number of e-book readers that will flood the market in 2010. Throw this in with the new iPad book functionality; you have a recipe for perfect digital literature distribution.