The debut of Google's store poses a huge challenge to No. 1 Amazon, which will sell an estimated $248 million in digital books this year, according to a projection by Credit Suisse Group. Amazon's share of digital book sales could drop from about 72% now to 35% in 2015, estimates Credit Suisse, due to competition from Apple and Google.

The books on display Monday look, at first glance, to be priced almost identical with Amazon and Barnes and Noble, with a few exceptions (Cross Fire, by James Patterson, is $14.99 at Google's store, compared to $12.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.) Most popular books are priced between $9.99 and $12.99.

Google says its Google eBookstore has the largest collection of ebooks online, thanks to its six-year process of scanning out-of-print library books that make up a large chunk of its online library. Beyond apps for reading ebooks on Android and Apple devices, Google is also pitching reading ebooks on computers and laptops, offering a free "Web Reader" to buy, store and read virtual Google books. You own the books, but they won't reside on your computer -- instead they'll be online and available for reading anywhere there's an Internet connection.

Google says it has the majority of publishers working with the company on the project, as well as independent bookstores, who will sell the books on their websites.

Why enter the business now? "You could say we're late, or that the timing is just right," says Scott Dougall, Google's director of product management for Google Books. "The fact is, ebooks are just starting to take off, and we want to make books more accessible."

Google says it has digitized more than 15 million books from 35,000 publishers since 2004. The idea at first was to have the books available for searching online -- and that became very controversial. Publishers were upset about Google scanning public domain books, and sued, but have since settled. The settlement will allow for these older titles to become available for sale in the eBookstore, Dougall says.

One big difference with Google's eBook store from competitors--thanks to the library scans--tons of free ebooks. For instance, there's A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen for free.

To hear more about Google Books, check out our Talking Tech video interview with Dougall. [Sooz comment: no embed coding on the videoclip ~ if interested, you can access it via the end link.]

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