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Sony has reached a deal with Google to offer access to more than a half-million public domain books from Google available on its current models of its Reader.

The books will be available for free to users of the Reader via Sony's eBook Store, which now boasts more than 600,000 titles. The move is seen as a direct challenge to Amazon's Kindle eBook reader, which has access to over 245,000 titles along with newspapers, magazines and blogs.

Steve Haber

"We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible - from our store or others - whether that content is purchased, borrowed or free," said Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Business Division at Sony Electronics.

"Working with Google, we can offer book lovers another avenue for free books while still providing a seamless experience from our store."

Books from Google will feature a list of traditional titles as wells as a number of items that can be more difficult for people to access. A number of titles are available in French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages. Users can search the full text of the collection, or they can browse by subject, author, or title.

"We founded Google Book Search on the premise that anyone, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture -- and not just when they happen to be at a computer," said Adam Smith, product management director.