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Google will sell and rent digital textbooks starting in August


Laura Hazard Owen's avatarGigaom

In time for the back-to-school season, Google (s GOOG) will start selling and renting digital textbooks through the Play store in August, the company announced at a breakfast in San Francisco this morning.

The main point of the breakfast was two bigger announcements: The Chromecast, a $35 dongle that lets you stream internet video to your TV, and a new Nexus 7 tablet. Nonetheless, getting into the textbook market helps Google compete against Amazon (s AMZN), Barnes & Noble (s BKS) and Apple (s AAPL), all of whom have already entered the digital textbook space. In general, Google has struggled to gain ebook market share against those companies.

Google says it’s working with the five largest textbook publishers — Cengage, Wiley, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Macmillan — and that students will be able to purchase digital textbooks or rent them for up to six months. It also said that prices…

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Hoopla wants to be a free Netflix for library users


Laura Hazard Owen's avatarGigaom

Hoopla wants to make borrowing material from a library as convenient as streaming content on the web. The company, launching to the public today after several months in beta, offers patrons of participating libraries access to on-demand streaming movies and TV shows, as well as audiobooks and music that can be streamed or downloaded. There’s no waiting, and patrons don’t have to remember to return the digital materials: After a set period of time, they expire. Titles can be streamed on Hoopla’s website or its iOS (s AAPL) and Android (s GOOG) apps.

The service launches at a time when libraries are increasingly making ebooks available to patrons. Seventy-six percent of U.S. public libraries offered access to ebooks in 2012. But offering access to other types of digital materials is still fairly new. It’s unclear how many users want them, but since Hoopla lets libraries pay per use, it…

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