At its Breakfast with Sundar event in San Francisco today, Google unveiled a service that will save starving students some money when it comes to textbook access, dubbed Play Textbooks. Starting in August, students will be able to purchase and rent textbooks from the Google Play Store and access them on Android devices.
Google has partnered with five textbook publishers for the service, including Pearson, Wiley, Macmillian Higher Education, McGraw-Hill and Cengage Learning. Although Google has not announced exactly which textbooks will be available, there will be a comprehensive offering in subjects such as math, accounting and law.
Pricing of the e-textbooks was not revealed, but Google did state that it is expecting to be able to offer customers a savings of at least 80 percent compared to the normally high retail prices of textbooks.