Software Alternatives & Reviews

Open Library VS Google Play Books

Compare Open Library VS Google Play Books and see what are their differences

Open Library logo Open Library

The ultimate goal of the Open Library is to make all the published works of humankind available to...

Google Play Books logo Google Play Books

Google Play Books lets you search, preview, and buy millions of books using Google Book Search.
  • Open Library Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26
  • Google Play Books Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-10-10

Open Library

Categories
  • Books & Reference
  • eBook Reader
  • Ebooks
  • eBook Manager
Website openlibrary.org
Details $

Google Play Books

Categories
  • eBook Reader
  • Ebooks
  • eBook Manager
  • eBook Converter
Website books.google.com
Details $-

Open Library videos

Open Library Overview

More videos:

  • Review - Aaron Swartz on The Open Library
  • Review - The Open Library of Humanities

Google Play Books videos

Google Play Books Review | Is Publishing on Google Play Worth It?

More videos:

  • Review - Google Play Books for Android Review
  • Review - Pros and Cons of Google Play Books

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Open Library and Google Play Books)
eBook Reader
57 57%
43% 43
Ebooks
53 53%
47% 47
Books & Reference
87 87%
13% 13
eBook Manager
38 38%
62% 62

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Open Library and Google Play Books

Open Library Reviews

15 Best LibGen Alternatives & Sites Like It in 2024
Open Library stands out by prioritizing accessibility for visually impaired readers, offering a diverse range of books in accessible formats, and reinforcing its commitment to inclusivity and equal access to information.
Source: earthweb.com

Google Play Books Reviews

We have no reviews of Google Play Books yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Open Library should be more popular than Google Play Books. It has been mentiond 263 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Open Library mentions (263)

  • MLIS books available digitally?
    Check out https://openlibrary.org. You can search ´library science’, librarian’, etc, and something should come up. Just select the ‘ebooks’ option to search for items within the collection. And you can narrow the search by subject, etc. Source: 4 months ago
  • NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month
    Right now I'm in the middle of the chicken and the egg problem where we don't have enough authors cataloging their publications and b/c of that obviously readers are not interested in using the site. I've gone back and forth with taking Open Libray's [0] catalog as that would at least flesh out our collection of books but then I'd have to deal with verifying authors to accounts so they can access their books.... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • is there any way to read books for free?
    Here's one: https://openlibrary.org/. Source: 5 months ago
  • YSK: You can access many old and out of print hiking books from the Internet Archive's Open Library
    The Internet Archive runs what they call the Open Library, which is a unique concept on the traditional library. You can sign-up with minimal details and digitally check out many scanned books from libraries all over the world. The only caveat is that almost all of the books are older editions - ones that would be impossible to find locally. It's great if you're looking for old routes, a look back in time, details... Source: 5 months ago
  • Searching for a pharmacy book
    I want to clarify that I'm a non-US citizen, so accessing physical copies from US libraries or buying it from Amazon might not be feasible for me. To give you some context, my personal research was guided by the wiki section of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH (https://www.reddit.com/r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH/wiki/reading/). I've conducted research using various online resources, including the Ebook & Open Source/Access Libraries... Source: 6 months ago
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Google Play Books mentions (106)

  • Tell HN: Correct Result for "Google Books" in Bing but Not in Google
    Searching for "google books" in google leads to https://books.google.com/ which no longer allows you to read any of your books. https://play.google.com/books is the site to read your purchased books now. Google search does not show https://play.google.com/books in its results at all. Thought it was some weird personalization quirk, but seems others have had the same issue:... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Engineer Bob Novak talks about UFO propulsion and anti-gravity in a 1963 recording
    Please use google https://google.com , https://groups.google.com , news.google.com/newspapers, books.google.com, scholar.google.com , https://archive.org https://yandex.com (the only image reverse search which actually works, google's got broken). Source: 4 months ago
  • Google Only Giving Book Results After Update
    I have no idea why, but ever since this new update, Chrome has become completely unusable. Every single search I make only retrieves books.google.com links. Nothing near relevant to what I want. I am not sure how to fix this issue. All help is greatly appreciated! Source: 5 months ago
  • The Battle over Books3 Could Change AI Forever
    Like these guys? https://books.google.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • The Curious Case of Jeff Nadu
    Now I think the “Jeff reads Wikipedia” criticism is a tad bit too far, but the problem of his reliance on books (that we should definitely not read) and some surface-level sources manifests itself perfectly in that video. Ralph Natale made an ass out of himself by publishing that book. It contains untrue stories that take away from his credibility and “mob resume”, and for some bizarre reason, didn’t include... Source: 7 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Open Library and Google Play Books, you can also consider the following products

Archive.org - Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies...

Amazon Kindle - Amazon Kindle software lets you read ebooks on your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, and...

Z-Lib - ZLibraryPart of Z-Library project. The world's largest ebook library.

calibre - Ebook manager, viewer & converter

ManyBooks.net - Thousands of free ebooks, pre-formatted for reading on your computer, smartphone, iPod, or e-reading device - ePUB, Kindle, eReader, PDF, Plucker, iSilo, Doc, RTF, Mobipocket, Newton Paperback, and zTXT ebooks ready to go!

FBReader - FBReader is an e-book reader for various platforms. Features: