Google iRiver Story HD Ready To Capture Its Market Share?

The race for your e-reading dollars is heating up, as the latest entry into the market comes via one of Amazon's primary competitors.  Google has certainly not been shy about advertising its iRiver Story HD, partnering with super chain Target and creating buzz in mainstream newspapers and on the web.

Thus far the jury is still out on just how successfully this particular device will rival the Nook or the Kindle.  Will it trump Kindle as the new Christmas reading gift of the year?  Just how good is the device?  Los Angeles Times writer Nathan Olivarez-Giles wrote: "One thing we know for sure is that the Story HD lacks the snappy touch-screens of the new Barnes & Noble Nook and the Kobo eReader Touch Edition devices." 

Ebrandz.com noted, "Interestingly, its integration with Google eBooks makes it the first device in the world to adopt the open platform, which like Apple's iBooks or Amazon's Kindle store, empower readers to browse and purchase a vast collection of digital books through WiFi, which could add another wrinkle in the rapidly expanding e-book market."

In my opinion, the success of the device is not so much the issue as what it respresents: Google is ready to be a major player, not simply a content provider, in the e-book world, and they have the platform to give Amazon a run for their e-reading fan base.  Hardware is important, especially to an e-reading audience, but in the age of apps, the device itself is still secondary; the market share is paramount, and right now Kindle rules the roost.  Not to be overly obvious, but if there's another brand that can match, if not excel, Amazon, it's Google.

There's no doubt that as the technology improves, to truly recreate the reading experience in all of its subtle nuances, the winners will be the readers.  A part of me, however, thinks that the real losers here are the New York conglomerate publishers, the stepchildren of major multi-media corporations who somehow let Amazon and Google trump them in a market that they should have dominated.  How these gigantic companies could have underestimated the impact of e-books a decade or so ago, how they could've lost the opportunity to not just supply but control the e-book industry, is beyond me.  With a little more foresight and ambition on their parts, any one (or perhaps a collective) of these publishers could have cultivated a site that would have become what Amazon.com is to the reading pubic.  Now, ever-expanding Amazon is rising up to publish some of their own successful Kindle authors, shown most publicly as they vied for Kindle star Amanda Hocking some months ago, and New York is fighting over e-book prices.   I'm not saying that they shouldn't set precendents for these prices--just that they're far too late.  As the makers of brands and best sellers, they should have been bold enough to look to future capital rather than simply taking the money waved before them.  Years ago, they should have denied their content and supplied them via sites and devices of their own, setting the prices long before the age of Amazon discounts set in.  Now, such a move might prove disastrous; they need Amazon and Google as much as these companies need them.  There is a monumental shift in reading habits upon us, and the real story is not simply that of the devices, or of content pricing; the real story is who puts all of that together to control the market.  Google is stepping forward; in their myopic vision of the market, the big publishers are the ones stepping back.  Again.