Amazon pulled an App Store end-around today and quietly launched the Kindle Cloud Reader, a web based version of the Kindle app.

Using HTML 5, the web app gives you instant access to your Kindle library, allowing you to read books immediately on the cloud, or download them for reading offline.

Kindle Cloud Reader supports Safari or Chrome browsers and is designed for use on Mac, PC, Linux, and Chromebook computers.

The web app, however, also supports Safari on iOS 4+, and is specifically "optimized for iPad." (See gallery images below.)

Any book shopping you do on the web app on your iPad, though, bypasses the App Store and goes straight to Amazon's Kindle Store for Tablets. Which has to be seen as striking a blow for the publishers and booksellers around the world who don't want to be tied down to the App Store's restricitions (and 30 percent cut) when trying to deliver an eBook onto a tablet.

The bad blood between Apple and publishers and booksellers like Amazon has been well documented. In June, Apple quietly relented on many of the more restrictive restrictions, and an uneasy truce was formed. Kind of.

By the end of June, Apple forced Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo to comply and remove links from their apps that bypassed the App Store. Kobo came out and said they would work on an HTML 5 workaround; Amazon and B&N said nothing.

But then Amazon got busy, or busier, as we suspect Kindle Cloud Reader has been in the works for some time.

Either way, it looks like the lines are being drawn in the battle for where you buy your apps and content, and right now the big dogs in the fight are Amazon and Apple.

You can follow this author, Adrian Hoppel, on Twitter, if you want to.

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Kindle Cloud Reader Optimized For iPad

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  Enter The Kindle Cloud Reader
  You sign in here with your normal Amazon Kindle credentials.

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  Increase Your Kindle Capacity
  You will be prompted to set aside some space (50 MB?) on your iPad for downloading Kindle books and have them available for offline reading.

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  Your Kindle Library
  You will have two screens, toggled at the bottom. "Cloud" will show all the books you've purchased, which are available for immediate reading if you are connected to the internet; "Downloaded" will show any books that are downloaded to your iPad and available for offline reading, too.

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  Read Away
  Open a book, start reading. Easy and relatively fast. Things can get slow depending on your internet connection if you are cloud-streaming your book.

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  Turn The Page
  You can swipe pages left or right just like those "other" apps.

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  Quick Navigation
  You can tap on the screen to get the quick menu to pop up, giving you a page slider at the bottom, as well as tools for font, refresh, bookmark, and back-to-the-library buttons. Easy-peasy.

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