Official Google Books iOS App Goes Live

Google launched its official eBook store earlier today, and promised an official iOS app for iPhone and iPad would follow in a few hours. The app is now available for free in iTunes here.

Google Books allows you to check on Google’s 2 million book catalogue and download ebooks to read them on your iPhone and iPad. The app comes with the same page turning animations of Apple’s iBooks, but the overall interface is quite different and similar to Google’s standard color schemes. Google Books features an offline reading mode to read books when you don’t have an active internet connection (useful on WiFi iPads when on the go), possibility to search within a book and adjust a font’s size, a night reading mode.

Surprisingly enough, the app doesn’t seem to support landscape mode on the iPad. I found the scrubber at the bottom to be particularly useful to jump between chapters of a book. Last, the app lets you download 3 books for free: “Pride and Prejudice”, “Frankeinstein, or, The Modern Prometeus” and “Wonderful Stories for Children”.

Check out the full changelog and more screenshots below.

The Google Books app offers access to over 2 million Google eBooks on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Take your favorite books with you on the go.

Great Reading Experience

- Change font, search within book, information about book
- Night-reading mode
- Offline reading mode

Discover Millions of Titles

- Millions of books in every imaginable category, from New York Times bestsellers to favorite classics
- Over 2 million free ebooks available instantly
- Over 400,000 ebooks for purchase
- Free preview pages
- Unlimited storage of books in the digital cloud
- Worry-free archive

Syncs With Your Google Books Library

- Find books at http://books.google.com/ebooks and add them to the ‘My Google eBooks’ shelf to sync
- Access all your ebooks wirelessly from the digital cloud; no dedicated e-reading device required
- Automatic page position synching across devices – pick up reading where you left off