Well, we’ve seen it called the “Spotify of books” too – choose whichever all-you-can-eat comparison you prefer. Either way, ebooks subscription service Oyster is shutting down.
“We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade—enabling access to knowledge and stories for billions of people worldwide. Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realise our vision for ebooks,” explained its founders in a blog post. “With that, we will be taking steps to sunset the existing Oyster service over the next several months.”
The difficulty of applying the unlimited-access model from music and TV shows to books may seem the obvious reason, but there’s a twist in this tale. Oyster’s CEO and his co-founders are joining Google, with Recode describing the transaction as an “acqhire” – Google is buying the people rather than the company. Watch this space for any news of an Oyster-style ebooks subscription service reborn within Google, then.
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