Oyster is shutting down its subscription eBook service

Oyster, the so-called Netflix for ebooks, is shutting down. Google will also reportedly pay out Oyster’s investors, basically making this an “acquhire”.

The startup had signed on all of the Big Five publishers as well as a bunch of smaller houses to give its readers more than one million titles.

“We couldn’t be more excited about the future of e-books and mobile reading”.

Mr. Stromberg, however, appeared to suggest that the New York-based company might later re-emerge in some form, writing, “We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade-enabling access to knowledge and stories for billions of people worldwide”. Those new opportunities will apparently be at Google, which has hired Oyster’s CEO, co-founders, and other team members for Google Play Books, reports Recode. Scribd continues to offer a similar service.

It will be interesting to see Google entering the e-books subscription business.

Oyster Unlimited cost $9.95 a month and its chief rival was Scribd when it launched in September 2013. With Oyster closing in the coming months, the market now has two remaining players: Amazon and Scribd. The existing Oyster service will be sunset in early 2016. This makes the deal an acquihire-buying out a company primarily for the skills and expertise of its staff.

Oyster, which had raised million, changed it model in April when it announced an expansion into online retail with an e-book store that would sell individual books, with hopes of attracting new customers to its service. But even these publishers have chosen to wait as long as six months to release their newest titles on subscription services like Oyster.