Currently, Google Play Books isn’t offering a monthly subscription, unlike its Music service. Lumin changes the color of the screen as the day gets darker, finally changing over to a black background so it is easier on your eyes to read at night. The firm claims to be now set on further revolutionizing mobile reading.
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Oyster, an e-book subscription service, has announced that it will stop its operations and most of its team is moving to Google. “We want to build the company that takes e-books into the next wave”. Many customers subscribe to video subscription services; however, many people are still not willing to subscribe for similar e-book services.
In April the company opened an e-bookstore in a bid to boost revenue, putting it in direct competition with such established retailers as Amazon.com Inc. Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks. While Oyster and Scribd have tie-ups with HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster for their titles, Kindle Unlimited offers no major-publisher titles.
Oyster itself is shutting down, but it appears a good chunk of its team will “continue on” with Google, according to anonymous sources who spoke with Re/code.
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Eric Stromberg, Andrew Brown, and Willem Van Lancker founded Oyster in 2012. Last year, it raised another $14 million in Series A funding. Google will apparently shell out cash for the right to hire some Oyster staff to appease investors, prompting Re/code to call this an acquihire. The existing Oyster service will be sunset in early 2016. Though the sector is not at all crowded, the firm competes with the likes of Scribd and Amazon. Oyster has found the ideal opportunity that could fulfil its mission: connect readers to books that they love.
