Jeff Bezos made a lot of money from his investment in Google (he was an early investor), and Amazon’s A9 builds on Google’s search service, but today Amazon announced it is “introducing two new programs that allow consumers to buy online access to portions of a book or to the entire book, giving publishers and authors another way to generate revenue from their content” (quote from the Journal piece, which is behind a paid wall).
Another tidbit from the story:
While Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wouldn’t comment specifically on the Google Print controversy, he said, “It’s really important to do this cooperatively with the copyright holders, with the publishing community, with the authors. We’re going to keep working in that cooperative vein.”
Not to toot my pal’s horn, but if you want to see this model really working well, check out O’Reilly’s Safari service.
Meanwhile, Boing Boing has more coverage of the Google Print story, this one a rebuttal to the AAP’s Pat Schroeder.