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settlement is expected to make available several milliontitles scanned by Google (Publishers Weekly, October 4,2012). Related litigation between Google and severalFrench publishers, including Hachette, Albin Michel, FlammarionGallimard, and La Martiniere, has been settled inout-of-court agreements (Livres Hebdo, September 7,2011).With this settlement, the road might open up for the largestlibrary of digitized works to be broadly and globallydisseminated, including massive numbers of titles undercopyright, as procedures for their legal distribution, includingcommercial downloads through Google, emerge.At this point, those 20 million books are maintained by thelibrary of the Hathi Trust, a “partnership of major researchinstitutions,” funded notably by Google. Only half of thedigitized works are in English. The other half, consisting ofover half a million books in German, 434,000 in French, andover 10,000 in Ukrainian, Bulgarian, or Serbian, turn thisinto the largest and most linguistically diverse repositoryof ebooks (for a detailed discussion, see “Global ebookdistribution complexities,” November 28, 2012).While Google’s ambition with regard to books started atsearching and cataloging them based on a full-text searchand earning revenues from customized advertising in thesearch results, books have started to be included in its digitalmultimedia distribution service, branded Google Play,which includes options for purchases via Google (or, in thecase of books, various other online shops) as digital downloadsas well as through third-party online platforms forordering printed books. Google claims to have 3 millionebook titles available on Google Play, mostly free ofcharge, with hundreds of thousands available for purchase(http://bit.ly/T1FrMx).Similar to the iTunes Store, however, the Google Play Storeis currently available only in a limited number of countries,including Australia, Canada, Spain, Germany, Italy, SouthKorea, the UK, and the US. So far, Google’s policy has beento roll out book services one country at a time, often witha long interval in between (UK in September 2011, Italy inMay 2012, Germany and Spain in June 2012, France in July2012) and delays attributed to long and tedious negotiationswith publishers over rights (for the example ofFrance, see Livres Hebdo, July 18, 2012.)In 2012, Google started to venture into the device marketin cooperation with selected hardware manufacturers (inthis case, Asus) by launching a tablet computer with anAndroid operating system, branded the Nexus 7.In the second half of 2012, Google, together with Amazon,was challenged in a widely publicized debate, notably inthe UK, over its practice of minimizing local tax paymentsthrough a complex fiscal sceme across Europe (for details,see “Google, Amazon, Starbucks are immoral and ridiculousover UK tax,” November 13, 2012).In the US, Google had a long partnership program with theAssociation of American Booksellers (ABA), which it cancelledin April 2012, to expire by January 31, 2013. In themeantime, Kobo stepped in to replace Google in this regard.Kobo“Kobo’s greatest asset? It’s not Amazon”, wrote the BritishObserver in spring 2013. (The Observer, 28 April 2013.) Itis true that next to paramount players who either representthe entirety, or significant portions, of the world wideweb, there must be a niche open for a contender that isdifferent, and Kobo is busy to fill out this space.Kobo was launched in 2009 by the Canadian bookstorechain Indigo Books & Music Inc. (TSX: IDG), which wasfounded in 1996 by Heather Reisman and her husband andmajority owner Gerry Schwartz. Kobo was at first a businessdivision, meant to cater to the emerging ebook market,then spun off as a separate business entity, and ultimatelysold to Rakuten (JASDAQ: 4755), the largest e-commerce company in Japan. Rakuten has recently seenaggressive and forceful global growth by acquiring multiplerelated online marketplaces, notably Buy.com (US), Priceminister(France), Ikeda (now Rakuten Brasil), Tradoria(now Rakuten Germany), and Play.com (UK), as well as aninvestment in the leading Russian online bookshopOzon.ru. Rakuten has reported revenues of $4.7 billion for2011. In 2012, and after the acquisition of Kobo, Rakuten’shead, Hiroshi Mikitani, has announced plans to confrontAmazon in a competition on global e-commerce (quotedin Handelsblatt, January 22, 2012).Kobo claims to be “one of the world’s fastest-growingereading services.”By late summer 2013, claims to have sold ebooks from itscatalogue of 3.5 million books and magazines into 190countries, with its devices supporting 68 languages. As ofSeptember 2013, Kobo has expanded beyond Canada,where in 2012 it controled a market share of 46%, accordingto Ipsos, by establishing localized platforms in Brazil,France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Por-The Global eBook Report 87