Google has launched its mobile books service whereby the 1.5m books that it has scanned are available to mobile users as well as traditional desktop users.

Google hopes to fight of Amazon’s Kindle which has sold 1/2m to date (Sprint estimates from users downloading books). Amazon is expected to launch the Kindle v2 later this month which is slimmer and has a metallic back (there are leaked pictures on the ‘net).

The e-book market is expected to be worth $1.2bn by 2010.

Google is hoping to extend its service soon with the addition of out-of-print titles and even current titles doing deals with publishers.