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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Allowing cached versions in personal computers is fairly irrelevant; the market for ebooks didn't take off until we had devices that let those books be read while lying in bed or sitting on a bus. If they don't transfer to mobile, offline devices, it's a limited-appeal techno-geek market. (Or a niche entertainment market. Yes, a lot of businesspeople have cellphones. It's fairly well established that very few of them are going to be reading substantial numbers of books on those phones.)
To tap into the reading marketplace--rather than the gadget-loving marketplace, or the computer geek marketplace, publishers & distributors need to first figure out how people use books. And a lot of ebook strategies have centered around "how do customers use computers, and how can we add ebooks to their use thereof?"
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I think we'll see offline caching on non-PC devices for eBooks, even from the likes of Google. Chances are it might initially require a download into an app , but I am sure the eventual goal is for caching of content to be read in a browser across a variety of devices.
Google will probably work with some select hardware partners to optimize their vision of an eReader, like they've done with handsets (in fact, I am sure Google Editions will work best and have more functionality on Android devices) - but over time you will probably see more non-Android devices allowing in-browser reading (though most likely NOT on Apple devices).