er or later use an electronic ink display. And to offer
them as an industry. The digital book is not--and will never be--a
niche product (dictionaries, travel guides, books for the blind): it is
becoming a mass product, with multiple forms, as for the traditional
book." (NEF Interview)

November 2007 > The Kindle from Amazon

Amazon.com launched its own ebook reader, the Kindle, in November 2007.
The Kindle was launched with a catalog of 80,000 ebooks - and new
releases for US $9,99 each. The built-in memory and 2G SD card gave
plenty of book storage (1.4 G), with a screen using the E Ink
technology, and page-turning buttons. Books were directly bought and
downloaded via the device's 3G wireless connection, with no need for a
computer, unlike the Sony Reader. 580.000 Kindles were sold in 2008. A
thinner and revamped Kindle 2 was launched in February 2009, with a
storage capacity of 1,500 ebooks, a new text-to-speech feature, and a
catalog of 230,000 ebooks on Amazon.com's website. The Kindle DX was
launched in May 2009 with a larger screen that could be more suitable
to read newspapers and magazines.

October 2008 > Google Books versus authors and publishers

The inclusion of copyrighted works in Google Books was widely
criticized by authors and publishers worldwide. In the U.S., lawsuits
were filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American
Publishers (AAP) for alleged copyright infringement. The assumption was
that the full scanning and digitizing of copyrighted books infringed
copyright laws, even if only snippets were made freely available.
Google replied this was "fair use", referring to short excerpts from
copyrighted books that could be lawfully quoted in another book or
website, as long as the source (author, title, publisher) was
mentioned. After three years of conflict, Google reached a settlement
with the associations of authors and publishers in October 2008, with
an agreement to be signed during the next years.

November 2008 > Europeana, the European digital library

The European Library is first a common portal for 43 national libraries
launched in January 2004 par the CENL (Conference of European National
Librarians) and hosted on the website of the National Library in the
Netherlands. In March 2006, the European Commission launched the
project of a European digital library, after a "call for ideas" from
September to December 2005. This European digital library - named
Europeana--opened