Alas, no longer. In a blog post Monday, Oyster’s co-founders said the company “will be taking steps to sunset” its existing service. Another competitor, Scribd, offers a similar Netflix-style e-book subscription, but adds the option of audiobooks and comics.
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What would Google want with an ebook subscription team?
Google is resistant to the notion that it bought Oyster. Even Amazon has declined to discuss how well its service is performing.
Oyster, which was founded in 2012 and launched its service a year later, took a novel approach to the ebook market, formerly offering only a subscription book service for $9.95 a month.
“As we continue on, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of ebooks and mobile reading”.
Mr. Stromberg, however, appeared to suggest that the New York-based company might later re-emerge in some form, writing, “We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade-enabling access to knowledge and stories for billions of people worldwide”.
No specific reason for the move is given, but the blog post alludes to “taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for eBooks”. Thankfully, though, Re/code has more info, reporting that several members of Oyster’s team-including its three co-founders-have gone over to Google and will join its e-book store, Google Play Books.
The startup raised $17 million in funding according to CrunchBase. Google is willing to pay Oyster’s investors, sources said, to get the service and the talent.
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Amazon also operates a subscription service providing “unlimited” books, which, like Oyster, is not available in Australia.
