It seems that some of the web search giant’s employees are huge fans of comic books or at least they know how those fans feel when trying to read their favorite comics on a mobile platform. As a result, Google just made comic fans’ lives easier with new Play Books upgrade.
It is no surprise that the tech giant, which is concerned about organizing information and making it easily accessible to its users, now struggles to improve the experience of an important segment of its customers – people who really enjoy reading comic books.
The new update is designed to glue comic fans to Google Play Books with enhanced scrolling features, and new methods of browsing through visual-heavy materials on Android platforms.
Greg Hartrell, project manager for Google Play Books explained that there is a huge demand for comic books. He disclosed that comic book readers usually ‘read’ a publication twice as fast as readers of conventional books. And, this may be because comic fans don’t really read their material, they actually skim through it.
This is the first time Google upgrades its service for the sake of comic book aficionados. But the move was necessary, because comics by nature are harder to organize and read on mobile devices. Many comic books come in a multitude of volumes, and countless issues.
This is why, Google partnered with major publishers including Marvel and DC comics to release digitally curated series. Moreover, publishers of hugely popular franchises such as “The Walking Dead” and “Bronies” are already making their books available for free.
Googleenvisions its digital library as a major source of revenue when people will get tired of its search engine. But in order to make it happen, Google needs to gain an edge over other distributors of e-books such as Amazon and Apple.
To date, Apple makes more cash from its app store than Google. But the search engine behemoth made some moves to change that. For instance, in October, Google revamped podcasting, while a month prior it bought the team that designed Oyster Books, a service that provides customers with high-quality e-books in exchange of a small fee. Nevertheless, Oyster Books was not behind the recent Play Books update.
The recent update is catered for both casual comic book readers and die-hard fans. But the latter group is of particular interest because they tend to spend more cash on their hobby. Google declined to tell how much cash exactly do they spend but the company did say that die-hards tend to become ‘omnivorous consumers.’
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