Kobo and Google

Two big bits of info for us Canadian readers...

1 - The Google bookstore is finally available in Canada

2- Kobo was bought out by a Japanese company

How these two things relate, I'm not sure yet.  My initial response to the Kobo news was, okay, I wanted to buy a Kindle anyway.  One of the reasons I bought a Kobo, all three versions have passed through my hands, actually, was the fact that they were a Canadian company.  Now, that's a mute point.

I have, kind of, a 100-Mile diet attitude about things, I want them made locally, or somewhat locally, if possible.  Now that Kobo is owned by a Japanese company I'm leaning more toward owning something, at least, North American.  The trouble is....Amazon is only selling one of their three Kindle versions, north of the border, and that one happens to be the non-touch, lowest level, Kindle.  Why, O-Why, does Canada always get the short end of the digital stick, when it comes to these things?

For instance, the rest of North America has been enjoying Google Books for a while now, almost a year, I think.  Today, that year later, it finally went live in Canada.  Which, I guess, is good timing, because if I can't get a Kindle in Canada then I can at least buy books from Google, instead of Japan.

Who knew conglomeration could be so confusing...eh?

Most of the people I've talked to have congratulated Kobo on the sale, saying it's a Canadian company that did good.  Sure they did well, in a short period of time they went from a start up to, today, being sold for 315 million.  They also lost 40 million in the last quarter, meaning in one quarter they lost 1/7-ish of their total worth.

Is this the future of e-reading?  Makes me want to run back to books, those things made out of paper and sit on shelves.  Books don't get bought out by foreign companies, change formats or only work on one companies device.