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Amazon turns to Android and the Web for eBook distribution

We’re looking at Amazon’s new Web-based Kindle book samples here, folks, offering you the chance to read the first chapter of a host of books in a format you can host on your Facebook page, website or by email. All very nice, particularly as rumors of an Android-powered Amazon iPad competitor continue to gather steam.As Amazon explains it, “Kindle for the Web Beta is a new experimental feature on Amazon.com that allows you to sample Kindle books through your web browser. Click the “Read first chapter FREE” button while shopping for selected books at Amazon.com to view the sample in your browser window. To purchase the book, click the “Get Kindle Edition” button. You can then read your Kindle book on your Kindle or any free Kindle reading application.”

This is going to be an extremely popular feature on many websites soon – we can imagine the opportunities for book reviewers running their own blogs, for example. There’s more information on the feature here.

That’s bound to up-the-ante somewhat when it comes to the increasingly intense competition between Apple and Amazon in the eBooks arena.

Speaking of which, hot rumors now predict an Amazon App Store, offering applications for Anrdoid OS-powered devices. That’s not all — Amazon is now widely expected to be developing an Android-powered iPad competitor.

Apple is involved in an increasingly intense war as Google gathers allies in the fight for the future of the mobile OS.

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