Skip to main content

New Update to Google Play Books App Removes Option to Upload PDFs

The ever google play booksenigmatic Google rolled out a new update for the Play Books Android app and it has a lot of bloggers scratching their head.

The new version of the GPB app (3.1.23) reportedly doesn’t have any new features. In fact, the only change that has been identified is that readers can no longer upload PDFs from the app. They can still upload Epub from the app and they can upload both PDF and Epub via the Google Play website, but for some reason Google has disabled this one feature.

Google added the upload feature a couple weeks ago, and that’s what has everyone puzzled. Why add a feature just to remove it 11 days later?

This is just a guess, but perhaps the feature wasn’t working too well?

I haven’t tested this feature myself but I have been reading user reports.  A number of people have reported that tyhey cannot upload ebooks.  There was a comment left on this blog, and there also several reviews which complained about this option:

Yeah, the download–>upload–>download model is just weird. And it’s slow! I tested a book last night, and it stayed at “Processing” for hours. Okay, I admit, I tested it on a Brandon Sanderson door-stop sized book, but still…

Not able to upload my PDF file to Google Play Books even after disabling QuickOffice. Still not able to discard my PDF reader.

EPUB and PDF’S still won’t upload on mobile! Just wish it wasn’t so cumbersome to upload them. If I download them on my phone I want to add them on my phone and read right away. Still can’t upload directly from my device, even though last update says I can it doesn’t work.

Upload doesn’t work. Would’ve stopped me from using other apps, you missed out.

I would bet that the upload function is more likely to choke on large files than small files, and since Epubs average significantly smaller than PDF the latter format was probably the source of a greater volume of complaints (or error messages returned from Google’s servers). It would not surprise anyone to see PDFs that hit 50MB in size (or more), but a 50MB Epub file is still the exception (textbooks, mainly, and other enhanced ebooks).

You can find the app in Google Play. But I wouldn’t download it; there’s no need. Instead I suggest that you wait until the next update.

Android Police

Similar Articles


Comments


Google Play Books Regains Ability to Upload, Read PDF Files – The Digital Reader January 30, 2014 um 9:06 am

[…] Play Books had gained the ability to upload Epub and PDF in early December, but lost support for uploading PDFs about 10 days later when Google realized that users actually expected it to function […]


yaduwendra January 7, 2015 um 10:06 pm

Its weird tht google has removed the upload pdf option.. Making playbook worthless app..its better to use other reader than to rely in google playbook


Write a Comment