You can own books without owning the big, clunky physical embodiments of them that are a pain to move (and I certainly agree those are a pain to move--on my last move my book collection turned out to require 34 boxes). I own a number of books only in electronic form, and by "own" I mean that I have copies of them that I control and can read and access no matter what Amazon (or Google or any other seller of "subscriptions") might do in the future.
You can own books without owning the big, clunky physical embodiments of them that are a pain to move (and I certainly agree those are a pain to move--on my last move my book collection turned out to require 34 boxes). I own a number of books only in electronic form, and by "own" I mean that I have copies of them that I control and can read and access no matter what Amazon (or Google or any other seller of "subscriptions") might do in the future.