Sony Corp. just upped its game in the battle with Amazon.com over the growing electronic book market. Sony announced a deal giving users of its electronic Reader access to half a million titles that are part of Google's huge database of scanned public domain books. That gives Sony a big infusion of book content as it goes head to head with Amazon's Kindle.

Sony said the new books from Google include "The Awakening," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," "Black Beauty,"  "Sense and Sensibility" and "Emma."

What does all this mean for Amazon? Sony's e-book store has now surpassed 600,000 titles, blowing past Kindle's current total of 245,000 books. The nature of the two companies' e-book offerings is different, though. Google's database of scanned books includes a lot of classics and forgotten titles, while Kindle has a big focus on new releases and New York Times bestsellers. Google's scanned books are free, while Amazon charges $9.99 or less for e-books.

With the electronic book market gaining traction, Sony, Google, Amazon and other players are racing to make their content widely available. The Sony-Google deal is one sign of that. Google has also announced e-book applications for Apple's popular iPhone and Android smart phones. Amazon, which recently rolled out its next-generation Kindle 2 reader, has a Kindle application for iPhone and is planning to link up with other mobile devices as well.