The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is launching its own digital book distribution network, similar to Amazon or Apple iBooks. The service, called Google Editions, looks to launch as early as late June or July, and will break into an extremely tough market.

It will be interesting to see how Editions plays with both Android and Google Books. With Android coming to a number of tablet-based computers in the next little while, would it be too far of a stretch to assume that Google will be featuring Editions prominently? Google has a vast book library already in its possession via Google Books, so hopefully this will serve as an advantage when it comes to bolstering their offerings to the public.

If we’re willing to speculate, it could also be surmised that Google would need a platform to sell these books on; they could easily just make an app and put it on the marketplace, or if they wanted to be ambitious, they could make a desktop client similar to iTunes. A single program for purchasing apps and syncing media would solve many of the decentralization problems Android’s marketplace currently faces.

Trackback: AndroidAndMe