The Sony Reader has been struggling to keep up with Amazon's popular Kindle e-reader since pretty much day one, and now Sony thinks it's beaten Amazon in at least one area: number of books available.

Sony and Google signed a deal to make Google's massive library of copyright-free books available for free on Sony's Reader devices in addition to the Reader's existing library. The deal adds about half a million books; that's twice as much as the total number of books available on the Kindle 2 (about 250,000). Amazon argues that it 250,000 books are ones that most people would actually want to read, including new releases and bestsellers. Most of the books you'll find in the Google library are classics or very obscure recent works.

Meanwhile, the Kindle 2 got its first ever firmware update — version 2.02. What the update does is unknown at this point, but you can be sure it doesn't add 500,000 new books; in all likelihood, it makes it possible for publishers to opt out of the text-to-speech feature.

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