Google has announced eBookstore, the new online ebook store powered by the giant, just in time for the holiday season. It’s not just another website where you can buy ebooks; the Google eBookstore is already one of the largest ebook collections in the world, with more than three million titles available since day 1 – including the latest bestsellers from the NY Times and the classics we all should read at some point in our lives.

The Google eBookstore has been launched with quite a different perspective than similar businesses like Apple iBooks or Amazon Kindle books. “We designed Google eBooks to be open,” says Abraham Murray, Google Books Product Manager. And certainly they are. These ebooks are bought online and stored in the cloud, in a private personal library with unlimited ebook storage accessed with a password, just like you use Gmail.

Google eBooks can be read on multiple devices and synced across them, from desktop computers to netbooks, including tablets, smartphones, and ereaders. The files are downloaded in ePub/PDF format, which makes them compatible with a large number of devices – but leaves others , like the Kindle, out of the list.

You can buy new ebooks from the Google eBookstore itself or from any other of Google’s independent bookseller partners. There’s no official statement about the price, as Google will let editors decide that for themselves – together with the use of DRM in their titles.

The Google eBookstore is currently only available in the US, which leaves Europeans looking forward to the day when it works on the other side of the pond. It’s certainly an interesting third competitor in the ebook market (besides Apple and Amazon), taking a different approach and launched at a perfect time: just in the middle of the holiday shopping frenzy.