I bought a ebook from Kobo, having never heard of them before and thinking they'd be the small competitor to Kindle that offers a better experience. (Oops, they're owned by a big conglomerate.) I stupidly bought the ebook using my google account to sign-on. Then to read the book, I had to enter my google account username and password into their app! Their desktop app is clearly an electron-type web-based thing but they don't have an in-browser reader so there's no secure way of letting them do single-sign on. Here's hoping this app I know nothing about didn't steal my password - the only solace being that a desktop app can screw you over regardless if it wants to.
If you buy from the kobo store, you can just go to your "library" on the website and download the DRM free files and then use whatever app you want to read the books.
So that's round-about but going to "My Books" (which seems to be their new "library") downloading it gave me a .acsm file which can be opened with Adobe Digital Editions software which will then download the epub. So it works, but surely there's a saner way!! Also note that you can't download the book from the book's page (which only points you toward their app), but only by clicking the dropdown menu on the My Books page.
It may have changed, but last time I looked, only some Kobo books are actually DRM free. For the others, if you have a Kobo device, you can download them onto your device and then use a Calibre plugin to extract them as a regular epub. I presume there's a way to do the same with the desktop client, but haven't used it myself.
On the whole I've been far more satisfied with Kobo than Amazon, though if the DRM situation ever becomes more onerous I'll stop buying from them. The devices themselves are excellent and pretty easy to tinker with.
It depends on the book. Some Kobo eBooks are protected by Adobe DRM... it's mentioned on the main book page in small print about halfway down beside the format if DRM is included.
