What's not to like?

Sony and Google have reached a deal whereby Google will avail a half-million copyright-free books on Sony's own Reader device — a rival to Amazon's Kindle e-book/blog/Wikipedia reader.

Google has been scanning books from major universities and research libraries since 2004. At present, it is able to make complete digital copies of books whose copyrights have expired. It also archives a handful of popular magazines. Late last year it enabled Google Book Search users to embed and bookmark such texts onto their sites.

The books which will be available to Reader owners were written before 1923 and include Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court," Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," and "The Letters of Jane Austen," reports The New York Times.

"We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible, and our partnership with Google is another step in that direction," stated President Steve Haber of Sony's digital reading business arm.

"We would love to continue working with Google to see how we can get more content for Reader owners."

Financial details of the deal were undisclosed — and the possibility of ad support remains murky — but the underlying hope is that the liaison will enable Sony's Reader to get a leg up on Kindle's popularity. Amazon's Kindle currently supports 250,000 books, composed mainly of new releases and best-sellers.

Amazon is currently fielding a lawsuit from Discovery Communications, in which the latter accuses the online retailer of infringing its e-book technology patent.