Amazon to Sell Electronic Book Access

Amazon to Google: we own books...

From the Journal:

[Amazon] is introducing two new programs that allow consumers to buy online access to portions of a book or to the entire book, giving publishers and authors another way to generate revenue from their content.

Although Bezos does not come right out and say it, clearly this is a shot across the brow at Google, especially with the timing of their recent print offering.

While Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wouldn't comment specifically on the Google Print controversy, he said, "It's really important to do this cooperatively with the copyright holders, with the publishing community, with the authors. We're going to keep working in that cooperative vein."

After Google develops their micropayment system I bet they also directly broker a large amount of media.