Amazon’s Kindle Cloud reader now lets you read e-books via Firefox

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If you forgot your Kindle, iPhone, Android smartphone, MacBook, iPad, Galaxy and Xoom tablets at home today not to worry, you’ll can still get access to your Amazon e-books.

The company said Tuesday it would now let readers peruse their Kindle books through Firefox, the second-most popular Web browser. Using its Kindle Cloud service, Firefox readers can sign in to their Amazon accounts to get a virtual bookshelf of every Kindle book they’ve ever bought.

This is another step toward an e-books everywhere strategy Amazon has been cultivating for several years. The Kindle Cloud has been available through Google’s Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari browser, but Firefox will bring online Kindle access to a sizable contingent of Web users. Firefox is used by closed to 25% of the Web browsing public -- second to Internet Explorer at 38%, according to StatCounter numbers compiled on Wikipedia. Firefox’s creator, Mozilla, says the browser has 450 million worldwide users.

Before Amazon brought its Kindle reader service to the browser, users had to download a standalone PC program to read the books offline.

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-- David Sarno

of the Kindle Cloud reader in Firefox 8.0.