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November 6, 2009

5 Google Updates for 11/6/09: News, Maps, Books, Music and Mobile

It's the end of another eventful week in search blogging, and once again there are several Google updates just piled up waiting to be written about. So, we're saving everyone some time and just compiling them into one post. Check them out:

Google News has a new sitemaps interface. You have six months to adopt the new sitemap.

Google Books now has a magazine search page.

Via Google Search's new music search, you can now access exclusive songs hosted by MySpace and Lala for artists such as Lady Gaga and Arctic Monkeys.

Google Maps has released imagery of Berlin from 1945 to 1953.

The Google Mobile App is now available at Best Buy (still free, which is the ultimate "best buy").

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 15, 2009

Google Plans eBook Store to Launch in 2010

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Google announced plans to launch an eBook store. The store will be called Google Editions and will launch in the first half of 2010.

About 500,000 books will be available at launch. They will also be available for download on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Google emphasized that it does not have plans to make an e-reader device.

Google will pay publishers of the e-books 63% and keep the remaining 37% when purchases are made through Google Edition. When purchased through another retailer, Google will get a very tiny share, with 45% going to the publisher and 55% going to the retailer.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 9, 2009

Google's Brin Defends Book Settlement in New York Times Op-Ed

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has taken to the editorial pages of the New York Times to pen a defense of his company's book settlement. Struck a year ago, the settlement recently went into renegotiations after much opposition from various groups complaining to the Department of Justice.

Much of the opposition has surrounded the concern that the settlement would give Google some exclusive rights. Google has maintained that authors would be free to negotiate with other online entities as well. Brin reiterated that defense in his Op-Ed:

Some have claimed that this agreement is a form of compulsory license because, as in most class action settlements, it applies to all members of the class who do not opt out by a certain date. The reality is that rights holders can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books altogether. For those books whose rights holders have not yet come forward, reasonable default pricing and access policies are assumed. This allows access to the many orphan works whose owners have not yet been found and accumulates revenue for the rights holders, giving them an incentive to step forward.

Others have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, or asserted that it would limit consumer choice with respect to out-of-print books. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organization from pursuing their own similar effort. The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns. Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice -- fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.

Brin closed his editorial with a reminder that books and libraries throughout history have been destroyed. He made an impassioned plea to preserve books online, so that further destruction can be avoided.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 25, 2009

Google Books Settlement: Back to the Drawing Board

Yesterday, a federal judge delayed the October 7 hearing for the Google Books Settlement. The ruling was in favor of a motion by Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Google didn't oppose it.

Judge Denny Chin said there wasn't a point in holding the hearing when the parties involved are negotiating to change it. (Click here to read about the original settlement.)

The negotiations come in light of opposition from a wide range of groups. The Department of Justice also raised opposition, primarily in the form of antitrust concerns.

Instead of a hearing on October 7, the authors guild and Google will meet with the judge to determine how to resolve the case, which has been going on for four years, can be solved as quickly as possible.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 24, 2009

Google Adds LIFE Magazine to Book Search

Nearly a year after adding LIFE Magazine image archives to its image search, Google is now offering digitized versions of LIFE Magazine through its book search. The digital archive covers all 1,860 issues spanning from 1936 to 1972.

You can access LIFE by going directly to Google Books and clicking on one of the covers. Once you do, you'll be taken to that issue's overview page.

You'll notice links to various articles on the overview page:

Below the links, you can browse through thumbnails of the covers for every issue:

Below that is a map of all the places mentioned in the issue you're currently browsing:

Going back up to the articles section, after clicking on a link, it will bring up the digital version of the article. You can "flip" through the magazine as if it were a print edition.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 18, 2009

Google Adds Books to Search Options Panel

Earlier this year, Google introduced the Search Options panel to its main search. The options allow search results to be filtered by things like time or content type.

Now, Google is adding Books as a filter on the Search Options panel. Take a look and let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 16, 2009

Google Acquires reCAPTCHA; Plans to Use Technology for Books and Archives

If you've ever had to type in a bunch of funny looking letters and/or numbers when registering for a site or making a purchase online, then you've experienced CAPTCHA. Google has now acquired reCAPTCHA, a provider of the secure measure.

What sets reCAPTCHA apart from other providers is that it uses scanned archives to provide the funny looking text. reCAPTCHA then uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to convert the scan to text.

Google plans to harness the technology for its Google Books and Google News Archive Search.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

August 27, 2009

Google Book Search Offers Public Domain Books in EPUB Format

Google Book Search is now supporting downloads of over 1 million public domain books through the EPUB format. EPUB is a free, open-source standard supported by some e-readers.

EPUB is text-based and allows text to automatically conform to smaller screens. Many e-readers don't render PDFs too well. Google has taken a lot of time digitizing books from print to the EPUB format.

To use the format, first conduct a search for a public domain book within Google Book Search. Then look for the "Download" link in the top right corner. Click on it and a menu will pop up. Select "EPUB"

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 23, 2009

Barnes and Noble Make Public Domain Titles Free on Google Book Search

Barnes and Noble will now be offering over 500,000 public domain titles with a new agreement from Google Book Search. The titles can be accessed via BarnesandNoble.com as well as B&N's reading applications.

B&N recently announced a new eBookstore as well as new mobile reader applications for the iPhone and Blackberry.

This isn't the first time Google Book Search has reached such an agreement. Back in the spring, they reached a similar agreement with Sony for their eReader.

What do you think about these eReader/public domain arrangements? Let us read your public opinion in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 29, 2009

Google Book Settlement Raises Eyebrows in Europe

Google's book settlement in the US is not sitting well with some in Europe. As a result, the EU is commissioning a study on the affects of the settlement on European authors. The deal that Google made with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) includes European authors who have been published in the States. However, they are allowed to opt-out of the deal if they so choose.

The EU, of course, isn't the only one scrutinizing the agreement. Last month, the Department of Justice here in the States launched an antitrust investigation into the settlement, despite the deal's nonexclusive clauses.

Additionally, the settlement must be approved by a court. The hearing is scheduled for October 7, 2009.

The settlement came after two years of disputes and negotiations between Google and the AAP. It involves Google shelling out $125 million to establish the Book Rights Registry, which would kill the existing class action lawsuit against Google for its book search.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 29, 2009

Another DOJ Antitrust Investigation for Google, This Time for Book Search Settlement

Months after Google pulled out of a search ad deal with Yahoo! due to a Department of Justice antitrust investigation, the search engine is facing a similar battle - this time with its Book Search settlement.

You may remember that Google reached an agreement with Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) last October. The deal would resolve a long-standing class-action lawsuit brought by the group. A court still needs to approve the deal, and a hearing is scheduled for October 7, 2009 (rescheduled from June 11).

Critics fear that the agreement would give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books, including orphan books where the authors cannot be contacted or whose rights are unknown.

However, on Google's site set up to address questions and inquiries regarding the settlement (Googlebooksettlement.com), Google says its rights are non-exclusive.

An inquiry doesn't mean that the DOJ will nix the settlement. But the DOJ does share some of the aforementioned concerns of critics, despite Google's assurance that the deal is non-exclusive.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 6, 2009

Google Releases Mobile Book Search for iPhone and Android

Google has launched a mobile version of its book search for iPhone and Android devices. Browse to books.google.com/m to check it out. iPhone users note that you can't simply browse to the regular books.google.com site and expect to be sent to the mobile site. Some web developers have included device detection in their sites, but not this one.

Here's what some of the pages will look like once you browse to Book Search on the Android (left) and iPhone (right):

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 9, 2008

Google Book Search Adds Magazines

In the wake of news that Google has struck a deal with publishers for its book search, and that they've acquired millions of digital newspaper archives, comes news that Google is pursuing magazine archives.

Today, they announced the new initiative, with new partnerships to digitize periodical archives including New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony.

Eventually, the results will be blended into the "regular" results over at Google.com.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

Google Reaches Agreement with Authors, Publishers for Book Search

Google has reached an agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which represented a broad class of authors and publishers to expand online access to in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. The publications will come from the library collections participating in Google Book Search.

The agreement was reached after two years of negotiations. The deal includes Google dishing out $125 million to establish the Book Rights Registry, which would resolve an existing class action lawsuit brought by the groups.

If the court approves, the agreement allows:

More Access to Out-of-Print Books -- Generating greater exposure for millions of in-copyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online
Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books -- Building off publishers' and authors' current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many in-copyright books
Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online --Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world's most renowned libraries
Free Access From U.S. Libraries -- Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries
Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works -- Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will also locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project.

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today, together with the authors, publishers, and libraries, we have been able to make a great leap in this endeavor," said Sergey Brin, co-founder & president of technology at Google. "While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips."

What do you think about the agreement? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 9, 2007

Google To Offer Digitalized Text Books For Big Ten Schools

In an interesting move, Google has partnered with the universities of the Big Ten to offer digitalized versions of text books, according to a CNN report.

Apart from the impact this will have in bonding college students with Google, the integration with universities, faculty as well as students, should have major longterm benefits for Google.

Harvard and California have also signed up to be added to this endeavor.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:19 AM | Permalink

January 19, 2007

Google Courts Book Publishers, Librarians

Google held an all-day love-fest for book publishers yesterday at the New York Public Library. The grandiosely named Google Unbound came complete with an all-star cast of Web luminaries: Wired magazine's Chris Anderson (author of "The Long Tail"); author and marketing guru Seth Godin; Cory Doctorow, author, BoingBoing co-editor and USC Fulbright Chair; and Tim O'Reilly.

Speakers spent the day trying to persuade publishers that Google could be their friend, and not a book-stealing upstart that just won't follow their antiquated publishing standards.

Reaching out to another niche audience, Google this week also launched a new Librarian Central Blog, to provide resources for this key constituency. Phil Bradley details some initial reactions from librarians, and says he's not sure Google is thinking of today's librarians as "dynamic, forward-looking, and technologically attuned," as many see themselves to be.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:05 AM | Permalink

December 14, 2006

Google Launches Patent Search

Google has launched a new search engine for finding U.S. patents going back more than 200 years, Google announced on its blog. Danny has some details at Search Engine Land, and Gary Price shares a roundup of patent search options.

Google Patent Search uses the same technology behind Google Book Search, with similar ability to perform full-text searches, scroll through pages, and zoom in on text and images. An advanced search feature lets users search by criteria like patent number, inventor and filing date.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 30, 2006

Yahoo Turns Down Google's Request For Information On Book Search

The NY Times reports that Yahoo has recently rejected Google's subpoena for help with the Google Book Search project legal woes. Reportedly, Yahoo turned down Google's request for similar reasons mentioned by Amazon when they turned down the same request. If you are interested, I have posted the full court filing at my server as a PDF download.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:11 AM | Permalink

November 22, 2006

Google Book Search Catches Victorian Plagiarists

We tend to assume that plagiarism is a reasonably modern day phenomena but a fascinating article from Paul Collins "Dead Plagiarists Society" illustrates that is not always the case. In fact it would appear that Victorian authors stole work from earlier authors who in turn had stolen it from even earlier ones, and the article gives some nice examples of this.

More importantly, it provides a fascinating use for Google Book Search, which I'd certainly not considered before, and it's actually a rather interesting experiment - take a partial sentence, plug it into book search and add words onto the end, and very quickly you arrive at a short number of results, allowing researchers to get a very clear view of the 'history' of a small passage of text. This in turn could then be expanded to provide an insight into a particular authors reading and research habits. Consequently we can all start to play literary detective quickly and easily; now where did I put my Sherlock Holmes?

Posted by Phil Bradley at 7:46 PM | Permalink

October 30, 2006

Judge To Rule By End Of Year On Kinderstart Case

Reuters reports that Judge Jeremy Fogel said he will take until the end of this year to rule on the Kinderstart case. The case was about how Kinderstart's ranking and PageRank fell and Kinderstart sued Google on numerous counts for the ranking drop. The judge recently said, "Assuming Google is saying that KinderStart's Web site isn't worth seeing. Why can't they say that? That's my question." So he will consider this and other questions in his ruling.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

October 25, 2006

Amazon Turns Down Google's Request For Information On Book Search

Business Week reports that Amazon has turned down Google's request for information to help in it book scanning lawsuit. Amazon responded to Google's subpoena saying, that it would make Amazon's trade secrets public and it was "overly broad and unduly burdensome" on Amazon. In short, it is Amazon's way of telling Google to stop looking over their shoulder and work it out yourself.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:29 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Publishers & Authors Consolidate Lawsuits Against Google

MarketWatch reports that a judge has consolidated two different cases against Google to make the process quicker and more "streamlined." Book publishers and book authors have joined together to battle Google on the legal from for copyright infringement allegations over Google's Book Search Project.

Postscript: Steve Bryant at eWeek reports that the Authors Guild v. Google case is postponed six months to January 2008. Steve said, "Doesn't that mean that Google, in the meantime, will continue to operate Google Books as normal, which is exactly what the Authors Guild wants to prevent?"

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:15 PM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

University of Wisconsin-Madison Joins Google Book Search Project

University of Wisconsin-Madison is the next university to join Google's Book Search Project. The University has one of the largest collections of historical documents and books in the US, accounting for about 7.2 million holdings. The University houses the famous Wisconsin Historical Society Library which is also part of this project. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has their release here and Google has their release here and Reuters has their article here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:35 AM | Permalink

October 6, 2006

Google Print Helping Book Sales

Despite a skeptical publishing community some publishers are seeing increased sales from Google's book scanning project. Reuters quotes several publishers as seeing increased sales. And here are the top 10 books on Google Book Search.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 11:59 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2006

Google To Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft For Info To Help In It Book Scanning Lawsuit

Just in from Bloomberg, Google to Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft on Book Scanning covers how Google hopes that gaining information from rival book scanning programs will help it defend itself in copyright lawsuits over its own scanning program. From the story:

Google, which doesn't disclose how many books it has scanned, also wants to know the title, authors and copyright status of books already offered through competitors' book projects, according to the documents.

The right to subpoena has been granted, but information is to be kept confidential and used only in the litigation.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:09 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

The Google Literacy Project

Reuters reports that Google, in conjunction with LitCam and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning, has formed The Literacy Project. The site, hosted at Google.com, brings together Google Book Search, Google Scholar, Google Video, Google Maps, Blogger, and Groups into one landing page. The site was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair with hopes to combat global illiteracy. Nikesh Arora, vice president of Google's European operations said, "Google's business was born out of a desire to help people find information."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:31 AM | Permalink

September 26, 2006

First Non English University To Join Google Book Search Project

Reuters reports that The Complutense University of Madrid, a Spanish university, is to join the Google Book Search scan project as the first library to join in a "non-English-speaking country." The Complutense University's library is the second largest in the country, with 3 million works.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:17 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

KinderStart Issues An Amended Complaint Against Google

Eric Goldman wrote that KinderStart has issued a 63 page second amended complaint against Google. KinderStart lost their first case against Google back in July of this year - that case was, in my opinion, ridiculous. This new complaint is even worse. The 43(B)log summarizes the complaints, calling many of them "incomprehensible." Eric Goldman says "I expect Google will file a motion to dismiss, which the judge will grant, at least in part (at minimum, to eliminate the Violation of Free Speech claim). I expect Google to go on the counter-offensive and renew its anti-SLAPP motions."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Google Book Search Adds "Find It At The Library" Link

The Google Book Search blog announced a feature named "Find this book in a library." How does it work? I went to a book and clicked on the Find this book in a library, which takes you to the OCLC Worldcat. Then you type in your postal code, state, province or country. I entered in a NYC zip code, 10010 into the search box. Then I clicked on the first result and ended up at this page that showed me that the status is available. More details at Google Book Search Help Center.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:18 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

Google: Banning Books In The US Is Bad; Censorship In China, Not So Much

Google's blogging (and here) about how it is supporting the 25th anniversary of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week by posting information about novels that have been challenged or banned from being in libraries within the United States. That's great, but it also rings hollow given Google's support of wide-spread censorship in China.

Consider some of the quotes the ALA has put out to promote its anti-banning campaign:

"Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." —Library Bill of Rights

"We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources." —ALA Code of Ethics

Google's a library resource, make no doubt about it. Pick a librarian, and they'll tell you Google is a key resource they use. Not the only resource, but an important one -- and one that I doubt they feel should be censored to the degree that Google does in China.

Back to Google's support of Banned Book Week, its new Explore Banned Books page has links to information about 42 classic books that have been banned or challenged over time. Here's a recent article on banned books in China.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:36 AM | Permalink

August 30, 2006

Download Books For Free From Google Book Search

Google is now offering free, downloadable versions of public domain books that you can find in Google Book search. Unfortunately, there's no way to browse through a directory of books that are available. However, you can keyword search for them easily, sort of.

On the Google Book Search home page, you'll see two options below the search box. By default, "All books" is filled in. Change this to "Full view books." Now search for something you are interested in, Dante's Inferno, an example both the AP and Bloomberg cite in stories about the new feature.

When the results appear, click on one of the books that comes up, such as this one. Over on the right-hand side, in the column just below the title, you should see a "Download" button. That will let you download the book in PDF format.

Here's the problem. Some Full View books are full view for reading online but not for download, and Google doesn't make it easy to narrow in on only the downloadable ones. For example, here's a search for mars. Here's the first book listed. No downloadable option is offered.

Since Google seems to be making downloadable versions of anything that's out of copyright -- and since those are books published before 1923 in the US -- you might try an advanced search for books before that date.

For instance, here's a search for all books about Mars for the years 0 through 1922 (FYI, I did try to search for books older than 0 AD, but the system doesn't support negative/BC dates, as far as I can tell).

Overall, this is a nice feature to have. Next time I'm heading on a trip, I might try downloading some PDF books to read for the journey. But that leads me to improvements I want to make it easier to find good books:

Give me a Google Zeitgeist for book search, or something like Google Music Trends. I want to know what people are reading via Google Book Search. What's the most downloaded book and so on, especially in different categories?
Provide a "Downloadable Books" search option, in addition to Full View, so I know I'm absolutely only going to get back results that match what I'm looking for.
Give me better ranking of downloadable books. Somehow I think there are much better popular interest books that could be coming up tops for a search on [mars] than I was finding in my example above.

Looking for more info? From Google's help pages, Why is the Download button only available on some books? explains that only public domain books get the download option right now, and even some of those have yet to be enabled.

How can I find books that I can download? explains briefly what I've already covered in more depth above, but that might expand over time.

What is a public domain work? explains what books Google considers to be in the public domain.

Google's not the only place offering electronic, downloadable books. Project Gutenberg is probably the best known long-standing site already doing this, and you can see some of the top titles here, similar to what I hope Google will do in the future.

That's also a handy way to see if Google offers some of the most popular titles that Project Gutenberg does. So far, the answer is no. I took this top ten list from Project Gutenberg:

I did quick searches using the Full View option along with the titles and author names. I couldn't find any of them available at Google for download.

Gary Price has also written about ebrary in the past that offers books for purchase and, I believe, some limited downloads for free. Last month, he also wrote of the World eBook Fair making 300,000 titles available for download. World eBook Library still offers links to these works, but you have to pay $9 per year for access to them. Wow, look at all those sci-fi books from Baen, including the alternative history work 1633 (I thought 1632 was great, 1633 OK and 1634, ugh!).

Watch ResourceShelf, as Gary's sure to post on alternatives to find downloadable books when he gets going later today. In the meantime, back when he was with us, his More Sources For Ebooks & Electronic Text post has a lot of resources you'll still find useful.

Google's also still apparently pondering sales of in-copyright works, with publisher permission, something that was floated by the company as an idea earlier this year. Amazon's also got similar plans in the works, but I don't recall seeing that having launched yet, despite its announcement nearly a year ago.

Finally, Google's also just offered a way for anyone to put a Google Book Search box on their site. Now you can add Google Book Search to your site from the official Google Book Search blog has more, as does this instruction page.

Postscript: For more resources on downloading books, see Gary Price's story here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:07 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

LibreDigital Warehouse Competes With Google Book Search

Steve Bryant reports that "publishers fight back against Google," with their own book search service. The new service is named LibreDigital Warehouse and was announced by HarperCollins and LibreDigital the other day. This new service will give "publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver searchable book content on their own Web sites." The technology empowers publishers to define rules on a partner and book title level, defining which pages are viewable, which pages are not, and what percentage of the pages are available. They will begin offer about 200 HarperCollins titles and increase that to 10,000 titles or so. More details on the service at eWeek.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:09 AM | Permalink

August 9, 2006

University of California Joins Google's Book Scan Project

As expected the University of California is partnering with Google on the Google library scanning project. Reuters reports that Google will be funding "the scanning of "several million" of the 34 million titles in the University of California's libraries."

Postscript From Danny: The partnership means that UC becomes the first organization to my knowledge to partner with both major scanning programs from search engines. UC partnered with Microsoft on its project in June. UC is also part of the broader Open Content Alliance backed by both Microsoft and Yahoo.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:05 AM | Permalink

August 2, 2006

Google Negotiating With University Of California On Book Search

UC May Join Google's Library Project from the Los Angeles Times covers news that Google may enter into an agreement with the University of California to scan library content for the Google Book Search service.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:58 PM | Permalink

July 5, 2006

Google To Launch Book Search Service In China

The People's Daily Online reports that Google will be launching an on-line book search service in China. Google signed agreements with publishing houses, instead of libraries (as Baidu has), including publishers named Tsinghua University Press and the Children's Publishing House. Google said that the books would be available on-line, "provide search links and grant free access to a segment of each work, but readers would have to pay to read the full content." Google plans on taking a 30 percent commission from the profit on selling books online.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:55 AM | Permalink

June 28, 2006

Google Book Search Wins Victory In German Challenge

I wrote earlier this month of a French lawsuit becoming the third one I knew about filed against Google over its book scanning project. Turns out, there was a fourth one -- based out of Germany. But now we're back to three, as Google has just announced that the German one has been withdrawn.

It looks to be Google's first legal victory in the battles over the project. From Google, via its Inside Google Book Search blog (and also on its main blog):

WBG, a German publisher, today decided to drop its petition for preliminary injunction against the Google Books Library Project. WBG (whose legal action was supported by the German Publishers Association as an industry model) made the decision after being told by the Copyright Chamber of the Regional Court of Hamburg that its petition was unlikely to succeed. It's our belief that the display of short snippets from in-copyright books does not infringe German copyright law. Today the Court indicated that it agreed, drawing a comparison with the snippets used in Google web search. And the Court also rejected the WBG's argument that the scanning of its books in the U.S. infringed German copyright law.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Scans Books By Hand?

Philipp Lenssen reports on how Google actually scans in books for the Google Book Search service. Yes, it seems like Google does it all by hand! Take a look at page three of The Trial and Death of Socrates. Now that is funny.

Postscript: Gary Price reminds me of his post on Learn About Open Content Alliance Book Scanning at the University of Toronto, with a link to Internet Archive's Book Scanning Robot. So that is how it works.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:55 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

The Google blog 'Inside Google Book Search' announced in No holds bard that it is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google - The complete plays of Shakespeare now at your fingertips. Well no, not exactly. I've spent some time playing around with this resource and it's less than impressive for a number of reasons.

I decided to take a look at the full text of a couple of plays, but in common with Philipp Lenssen found that I couldn't actually see the full text. All that I got was a fairly brief page with some bibliographic data, an opportunity to buy the book and links to related information. I went through each section in turn and found that in total I could read 13 of the plays Google listed, but was unable to do so for another 24. This may be in part due to the fact that I'm in the UK, and as the Google blog comments in an update some versions of the plays are not in the public domain everywhere in the world, so we can only see snippets.

I simply do not believe that Google could not have found versions of the plays that are out of copyright, particularly as they are keen for us to have the complete plays at our fingertips. However, I'll let that pass. What I really find unforgivable is their section 'Other ways to explore Shakespeare'. This gives me options to look for more resources, take a scholarly perspective, connect with enthusiasts and so on. Clicking on any of these links runs a default search for 'shakespeare'. Consequently with most of these options I get a huge number of results, many of them inappropriate. A search just on 'shakespeare' is the kind of basic search that I'd expect a school child to do once. I find it amazing that someone at Google could not have come up with rather more interesting and complex searches to fully utilise the power of the search engine, not only to give us a good search result, but also to show us just what it can do.

The concept is a great one; full marks to Google for having a go at it. The result is very much less than perfect, and for Google to say that they're making Shakespeare more accessible is in my opinion boardering on disingenuous.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 11:02 PM | Permalink

June 6, 2006

French Lawsuit Over Google Book Search French publisher sues Google for piracy from AFP and French book publisher sues Google from the BBC cover how a French publishing group becomes the third to sue Google over its book scanning program. La Martiniere alleges the indexing project violates copyright. Association of American Publishers Sues Google over Library Digitization Plan and Google's Library Scanning Project Heads to Court (action by the Authors Guild) covers the two other suits that I know of, which we've blogged about before.

Postscript: Google argues with U.K. publishers over digital libraries from News.com covers publishers in the UK making new attacks against the program. The Publishers Association trots out the usual argument that scanning to index is the same as copying to reprint and that permission should be required.

The group's web site, it should be noted, has 919 pages listed in Google, all of which are protected by copyright, all of which Google and other search engines index without explicit permission -- and all of which the group apparently doesn't object to, since it doesn't seem to have banned indexing using a robots.txt file (the site is down, so I can't verify this first hand -- but the pages really are unlikely to be listed if this were the case). But do the same thing with a print book -- copy for indexing purposes rather than reprinting -- and suddenly, that's infringement. Well, the courts will sort it out.

Indexing Versus Caching & How Google Print Doesn't Reprint and Once Again -- The Difference Between Google Print & Google Library are two key articles from me that examine the issues above in much more depth.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:45 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2006

A Talk With Vinton Cerf On Google Book Search

Leslie Walker from the Washington Post sat down with Vinton Cerf, founding father of the Internet and Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, about Google Book Search. They basically talked about Google's goal in digitizing books to make them easily findable via search. Read the article at WashingtonPost.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:10 AM | Permalink

May 9, 2006

Inside Google Book Search Blog Launches

Google has recently launched Inside Google Book Search, the Google Book Search blog. The blog will not only keep us informed on Google Book Search product announcements, but will also provide Google book search tips. They will also highlight books they found useful and enlightening at the blog. Visit the new blog at http://booksearch.blogspot.com/.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:35 AM | Permalink

March 13, 2006

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

Google gave me the heads-up late Friday that a new feature allowing publishers to sell online versions of their books through Google Book Search was about to go live. Nothing was yet online when we talked, but that's since changed. A new help page, What does it mean to sell online access to my book?, explains that the program is the first in a series of revenue tools being rolled out for publishers.

The experiment will allow publishers to sell access to their books online, something Google hinted was coming back in November and January. Publishers set a price, then consumers can buy and read the book online. At the moment, the program supposedly will not allow copies of the book to be saved to a computer or pages to be printed ("copy pages") to be made. We'll see. So far, Google's existing protections limiting what users can see from books online have not been cracked, to my knowledge.

The program does not allow anyone but publishers in the US and UK who are voluntarily in the Google Books Partner Program to sell books online. Google also has book content that comes from its library scanning program. These books are not being sold. It bears stressing:

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

Despite the capital letters and bolding, expect that many will begin saying that Google is now illegally selling books that it has scanned from libraries, just as many incorrectly say Google is reprinting scanned books online (they aren't). Some will do this out of misunderstanding. Some opposed to the library scanning program will do it on purpose, just to continue muddying the waters. To understand the myths and realities, please consider reading these past posts from me:

Want to start buying books now? Hang in there. Google told me that first they're getting publishers up and running, then at some undetermined point in the future, books available for sale will be offered.

John Battelle's got a very short note on the new page being up over here. As a sidenote, be sure to check out John Battelle's The Search and Google Book Search that John pointed at last week. In the interview, you can see how his publisher Penguin won't let books go into Google Book Search despite John wanting to be there. I like this part of the copyright page in his book:

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Wow -- I didn't know the lawsuit over the library scanning program had been settled. Certainly it's fair use for anyone to copy, scan and do other things with pieces of the book without permission, depending on the various circumstances involved. Whether the entire book can be scanned for indexing purposes, rather than reprinting online, is what the lawsuit that Penguin and others are trying to discover.

By the way, distribution of the book "via any other means" is also mentioned. I wonder if every library that has a copy of the book got the publisher's permission to redistribute to their patrons. I'm guessing not. Expect libraries to be sued shortly.

Back to book selling, the Unofficial Google Weblog points to Google Offers Online Pay Plan from Publishers Weekly, which quotes Google talking about "perpetual access" to the books you buy, plus Google saying publishers will get the majority of the price charged, though Google itself will of course also cash in.

Threadwatch points at this blog post, which covers how publishers in the partner program got the news via email and citing one anonymously who is surprised/shocked that publishers are being asked to enroll without yet seeing what the money split will be exactly. Good point.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

For more on Google Book Search, please see our Google: Book Search & Library category, if you are a Search Engine Watch member (and thank you, if so). You might also check out A Look Back as Google's Library Project Passes the One Year Mark.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:53 AM | Permalink

March 8, 2006

Google Book Search Adds Find it in a Library for Some Books

The Google Blog announced that they added a link to some books named "Find it in a Library". I have been unable to find a book in Google Book Search with a link named "Find it in a Library," just yet. Google says that clicking on the "Find it in a Library" link will send you to the OCLC Worldcat. At OCLC you can enter your zip code and find a local library that has the book you search for.

If you are looking for alternatives to Google Book Search, I know Gary Price, the librarian himself, is a huge fan of RedLightGreen for book search. Gary wrote a SearchDay article on it named Searching for Library Books with RedLightGreen. Other alternatives Gary wrote about include NetLibrary and ebrary.

Postscript: After researching more I figured that new books would not have the "Find it in a Library" link. So I searched on a out of copyright book and presto, here is an example (see the bottom left for the link). I am not 100% sure this is brand new, the Google Blog post may be just pointing out that this is a feature on some books.

Postscript From Danny: The library links have been in place since 2004, as covered here. But Google says it wishes to expand them and also highlights in the post that if you can't wait for this, this Greasemonkey script for Firefox will do it for you.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Amazon More a Threat to Publishers Than Google

Reuters reports that Amazon is seen as a larger threat to the print publishing industry than Google. HarperCollins UK's CEO, Victoria Barnsley said, "We all want to talk about Google, but personally I see Amazon as a bigger threat because Amazon has shown a lot of signs that they actually want to move into the publishing space." They are now considering leaving Amazon and creating their own online distribution service, direct to the consumer. She did, in regards to Google, "I do think that search -- which is what Google is about -- is going to transform our industry. I think it's the most exciting that's happened." That is why they want to keep an open "dialogue" with Google at all times.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:59 AM | Permalink

February 7, 2006

President of University of Michigan Talks Google Book Search

Via Searchblog, I read the excerpts from a speech by the President of the University of Michigan, Mary Sue Coleman, about Google Book Search or to be more specific Google's Library Program. The full text of the speech is here (thanks John). I have no intention on arguing the intellectual property/copyright/fair use issues that the program brings to the forefront. I'll save that for the lawyers and judges.

However, a couple of quick comments on other issues.

First, Google's efforts to digitize materials both public domain and in-copyright are noble and should be applauded.

However, as we've pointed out on SEW Blog several times, the searcher who finds in-copyright material (that's been digitized via a library collection) will only be able to read snippets of these books online. In other words, it's not a full text book search tool. As Google describes it:

"...Snippet View which, like a card catalog, shows you information about the book plus a few snippets ? a few sentences of your search term in context."

Quick note to Google. Card catalogs are very rare these days. They are, for the most part, now called Online Public Access Catalogs. They are web accessible and often contain lots of value added data like reviews, tables-of-content, indexes, author bio's, etc. I posted on this topic last year with several examples of the "modern" card catalog.

If you're interested, Google is using the year 1922 as a baseline to determine copyright.

For users in the U.S., Google Book Search currently treats all books published after 1922 as protected by copyright, except for books to which no copyright was ever attached, such as books authored by the U.S. government. For users outside the U.S., we make determinations based on appropriate local law.

New, in-copyright books will also be available (as part of the Google Book Search "Partner Program"). No legal issues here. Users view as much content as the publisher deems fit.

This is no different than what Amazon.com is also doing with their Search Inside the Book program that currently also offers lots of cool stats for SITB titles.

As far as "pure" public domain material, the full text will be viewable online and in full text via Google Book Search. However, as Ms. Coleman points out libraries and others have been digitizing books in one form or another for many years. For example, Project Gutenberg began in 1971. A great directory of public domain books (from a variety of sources including Google, Project Gutenberg, and many others) is available here.

Of course, let's not forget that late last year we learned that Yahoo, Microsoft, RLG, and others are supporting another large digitization (books and other materials) effort called The Open Content Alliance that's being led by Brewster Kahle.

As a librarian, I'm thrilled that the potential for people to make better use of their libraries could be made possible by Google's Library Program. However,

+ Will people make the extra effort to get the book they need from the library or via interlibrary loan if what they find online is only a snippet? This could be great news for the library community but would it be good news for Google?

+ I'm asking this question because of comment from Google's Chief Counsel, David Drummond, at a November 2005 Google print "debate" at the NY Public Library. Here's how the NY Times reported it:

Mr. [Allan] Adler [a vice president for legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers]said Google's contention that its search program might somehow increase sales of books was speculation at best.

"When people make inquiries using Google's search engine and they come up with references to books, they are just as likely to come to this fine institution to look up those references as they are to buy them," he said, referring to the Public Library.

To which Google's Mr. Drummond [Google's general counsel] replied, "Horrors."

I also once again want to point out that many other companies are out there offering full text access to a variety of book materials. In some cases, these databases are available at little or no cost, allow you to access the full text, print content, annotate, etc.

Here are a few posts that look at some of these services:

+ NetLibrary: Over 100,000 Digitized and Searchable Books Available Online

+ Search and Read Full Text Books Online via ebrary

+ More Sources For Ebooks & Electronic Text

+ Don't forget that many libraries (including public libraries) already offer free full text databases (articles, books, audio books) for free from home or office. All you need is a library card. This article has more along with several examples.

Random Thoughts Kudos to Ms. Coleman for saying: We were digitizing books long before Google knocked on our door* and we will continue our preservation efforts long after our contract with Google ends. As one of our librarians says, ?We believed in this forever.? Google Book Search complements our work. It amplifies our efforts, and reduces our costs. It does not replace books, but instead expands their presence in the marketplace.

* The Humanities Text Initiative is one example of a digitization program that's been going on at the U of M for many years.

Coleman then mentions that a copy of each digitized book will be given to the University of Michigan. What does this mean for the researcher who does not have access to the University of Michigan Library?

+ Will the public be able to access these digitized full text copies that the U of M is provided with through an interlibrary loan or perhaps an interlibrary "download" program? For example, will a researcher in Germany be able to quickly access the full text of a 1972 book about tourism via Google and the University of Michigan that they need for their research?

+ What usability of the digitized content? Will the book or perhaps better said, snippet, have? Can you copy it? Annotate it? Share it with a colleague? Copy and paste a passage into an email? Print a page?

+ Will Google decide to sell full text access to some/all of this material? They've already hinted at opening an online e-bookstore? Mr. Drummond's response (listed above) leads me to also believe that one day Google will be selling access to some of these full text books. What does this mean for the library in the long run?

+ Assuming that all of the material (billions of words) are fully indexed, will people be able to find what they're looking for in a rapid manner? When a typical searcher enter two, three, or four keywords and then be given thousands of hits. Will specialized collections be developed? Will subject searching be available? Is Google going to use Libary of Congress Subject Headings or develop their own controlled vocabulary and cross reference structure? Will dynamic clustering be available? Does Google have any plans to train users in becoming better searchers?

+ Right now, Google is very clear that no advertising will appear on pages of books that have been digitized from a library. Could this change in the future? Who would profit from these ads? Would profits be shared with the publisher, author, etc.?

+ I have many more questions but we'll save them for later.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:44 PM | Permalink

January 10, 2006

How Does a Google eBook Store Sound?

So, what's next Google service going to be? According to this BBC News story, it just might be an online bookstore for ebooks. This idea was floated past reporters and other invited guests in a post keynote backstage press conference last Friday night.

From the article: Google has suggested it may consider setting up an online book store. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that this would depend on permission from copyright holders.

We know that Amazon.com has plans to allow users to purchase online access and/or and download chapters or pages of books via their "Amazon Pages" and "Amazon Upgrade" programs that are set to launch sometime this year.

Actually, Amazon.com already offers some popular titles for downloading to Microsoft Reader. The Da Vinici Code is one example.

Microsoft also has their own ebookstore.

Google would also face competition from many other online ebook vendors and services. Browsing through the DigitalBookIndex and eBooklocator databases will give you an idea of what ebook content is already out there. You can find a list of other online and ebook sources here.

When I first learned about the Google Library program (not the same thing as Google Book Search for Publishers) I thought that once Google digitized a lot of this older, non-digitized content AND with then gain permission of copyright holders it would be a natural for them to sell it both electronically and/or offer a print-on-demand service. Perhaps, these comments from Schmidt are the first we're publicly hearing about the idea. Of course, now with the launch of Google Video Store, they're developing the business (Google Payment Corporation) and methods for online payment. Who knows? It seems that just about every there is talk/speculation about another new service from Google. Chris even joked yesterday that Google Doctor might be not far off.

Having manangement tossing out ideas, keeps people talking (Google speculation could be a full time job), buzz humming, and investors investing. This is as much a part of Google's brilliance as anything else.

You can read more about the backstage press event in this Endgadget report. A BBC interview with Eric Schmidt is also available.

Thanks to Science Library Pad for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:21 PM | Permalink

January 6, 2006

New Congressional Research Report Looks at Google Book Search, Online Indexing and Fair Use

On December 28th the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a six page research report that looks at online indexing, law, fair use, and the Google Book Search project. The full text of the report is available here.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is one of the most respected names in research. You name the topic and they prepare reseach reports on it. CRS is located here in DC at The Library of Congress. Many of their reports are difficult to access (that's another story) but thanks to various organizations like the Open CRS Project, the Federation of American Scientists, and National Library for the Enviroment, the IP Mall collection, it's getting a bit easier. One caveat is that CRS reports are frequently updated so make sure you're reading the most current version possible. Thanks to S.B. for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:27 PM | Permalink

December 28, 2005

Google Book Search "Hack" Just Normal Operation

Steve Rubel thinks he's "hacked" Google Book Search, as he covers in his Read Most of O'Reilly's Hacks Books for Free Using Google post. In reality, I think he's just finding that Google Book Search operates exactly the way it is supposed to operate, to show you a percentage of a book that a publisher itself has allowed you to view online.

Steve describes reading books in O'Reilly's "Hack" series, such as Podcasting Hacks. He'll go to the table of contents, pick a hack he wants to read about, then is able to read an entire chapter covering the hack as the chapters are fairly short. If I understand right, he then goes back to the table of contents, finds another chapter, then reads that.

Scary sounding stuff, reading the entire book online like that! Actually, it turns out he can't read the entire book. The percentage he can read isn't so scary when you understand that a publisher is allowing it.

Once Again -- The Difference Between Google Print & Google Library covered this once before, on how publishers work with Google Book Search. Nevertheless, I'll do a short version and apply it to what Steve found.

Google Book Search takes in content in two different ways. There's the Google Library program, where they scan books. If the book is out of copyright, the entire content may be displayed. If it's in copyright, nothing is displayed other than small snippets. Then there's the entire separate Google Books Partner program. Publishers in that program, like O'Reilly, voluntarily submit their books. When they do this, they can also indicate how much of their books they want to have displayed, from 20 to 100 percent. If they don't want any of it viewable, then only snippets and no actual pages are shown.

In Steve's case, O'Reilly is in the partner program. You're told that at the top of the pages you view, where it says:

Provided by O'Reilly through the Google Books Partner Program.

Now remember that 70 percent figure Steve was talking about, that he could read about 70 percent of the hacks in any particular book? Sounds to me like O'Reilly's gone with a 70 percent viewable figure for its books.

You can see another mistaken assumption (or perhaps intentional twisting) of how Google Book Search works over at Google Watch. Scroll to the bottom of this page, which is against the library scanning program.

You'll see a graphic with the faces of Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saying, "Hey boys and girls, write all your term papers using Google's snippets. No need to visit the library to find that copyrighted book."

The example used below the smiling faces of Larry and Sergey is a search on Steve Badrich, with this snippet shown:

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era by Kenneth J Heineman - History - 1994 - 160 pages Page 134 - ... Steve Badrich, decided in March 1966 to enlist in the marines rather than spend two more anxious years at the university while his draft board made ... [ More results from this book ]

Below that is a screenshot of an actual page from the book, such as you'll see here at Google Book Search.

Conclusion? I think many will read that as an example of how Google Book Search is taking copyrighted books out of libraries and putting them online in a viewable format. But go up to the top of the page, and you'll see this:

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era by Kenneth J Heineman - Provided by NYU Press through the Google Books Partner Program

In reality, this book wasn't scanned through the library program. It was put into Google Book Search by the publisher itself, NYU Press. And the reason those college "boys and girls" can view the page online is down to the publisher itself allowing this.

Gary looked earlier in Can Full Book Preview Prevention Be Hacked? at another mistaken assumption this year that someone had found a Google Book Search hole when in reality, it was the publisher allowing viewing.

Gary's post also covers the only single report (source material no longer online) I've ever seen about someone saying they found away around protections entirely. This was before Google had the required log-in system and used a wholly cookie-based on. Since that time, no honest-to-goodness hacking has come to light that I've seen.

I'm not saying it's impossible. It wouldn't surprise me if it happens. But that's not what Steve's done here. There's no "hole" that he's "hacked," as far as I can tell.

Postscript from Gary: I agree with all of Danny's comments. Two quick points. First, a recent post about Firefox add-on CustomizedGoogle says that they have a method that allows the printing of CustomizedGoogle pages. This would also make for some issues if the tool grew in popularity and people started printing thousands of pages. Second, if you're interested in reading and searching all of the O'Reilly books as well as tech books for many other major publishers including MS Press, Sams, Prentice-Hall and many more. I suggest taking a look at a service named Safari Tech Books, that just happens to be co-owned owned by O'Reilly. Yes, O'Reilly content everywhere. This service allows full text searching, fielded searching, printing, e-mailing, and more. As I've said many times in 2005, many libraries like the San Francisco Public Library offer access to this service for FREE! That's right, free!!! No hacking needed. (-: If your library doesn't offer it, then you can subscribe to Safari. Prices vary but access to up to 10 books (full text, no limit) is about $20.00. This page has more info. Interested in a free trial to to the full service? Go for it! It's completely free for two weeks. Register here. Btw, Safari offers other tools. For example, notificiation of new titles via RSS. A feed generator makes all sorts of feeds (titles by publisher and category) possible.

So, Safari doesn't have the titles you want. Then take a look at Books24x7. Again, this service is usually licensed to companies, libraries, etc. but individual subs are also available. Again, full text, seachable access (no limits on how much you can view or print). This collection offers more than technology books. Here's a list of a few recently added titles. You can also request a free trial.

Access to more the 20,000 NEW books (no limit on how much you can view online) is available from ebrary. Online access is free, just pay to print or copy pages. Usually about $.25/page. Great stuff. More in this SearchDay article.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:09 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2005

With One Link, Google Book Search Becomes Google's 5th Most Popular Service

Google Print Is Google's Ninth Most Popular Service here on the blog last month covered how according to Hitwise, Google Print -- since renamed Google Book Search -- made the top ten of most used Google services, though usage was only by a tiny 0.4 percent of Google visitors. Since then, a small change by Google has dramatically increased the visits to Google Book search and pushed it into being the fifth most popular service it offers.

Bill Tancer of Hitwise, who loves nothing more than to play with the stats his competitive analysis service has on user behavior, dropped me an update yesterday showing how the Google top ten line up had changed from the last time I wrote about it. Here's the rundown:

Service

Week Ending Nov. 5

Week Ending Dec. 10

Point Change

Percent Change Google Web Search

79.9%

79.1%

-0.9%

-1.1% Google Image Search

9.2%

9.3%

0.1%

1.2% Google Mail/Gmail

5.6%

5.4%

-0.3%

-4.5% Google News

1.6%

1.5%

-0.1%

-4.4% Google Book Search

0.4%

1.5%

1.1%

322.9% Froogle

0.7%

0.9%

0.2%

33.3% Google Maps

0.8%

0.7%

-0.1%

-13.3% Google Earth

0.3%

0.5%

0.2%

69.0% Google Groups/ Groups 2 Beta

0.5%

-0.1%

-9.4% Google Directory

0.2%

0.0%

6.3%

As you can see, Google Web Search remains the most used service by far. Google Book Search, which had been the ninth most popular service, moved up to position five.

Notice the point change and percent change columns. The first shows the raw percentage point change between the two time periods. Google Web Search had a dip of less than 1 percent, so no major change. Google Book Search had a point change of just over 1 percent. In the case of that service, this was a big deal.

Why? The percentage change column tells the story. That 1 percent point increase for Google Book Search means relatively speaking, it went up over 300 percent in traffic -- more than three times the number that used it a month ago are now turning to the service. In contrast, a 1 percent change either way with Google Web Search is a drop in the bucket.

So what gives? What happened? Cast your mind back to mid-November, when Google started putting at the bottom of regular search results pages this message:

Try your search again on Google Book Search

For more on that change, see Google SERPs pushing Google Books at our SEW Forums, When Will Google Do An Amazon at Smart Keywords and Google Book Search Within SERPs at Search Engine Roundtable.

Was the change responsible for the increase? And what about Google Groups, which has had somewhat similar promotion on the bottom of results? The chart tells the tale:

You can see that just after Google Book Search links were added, traffic to Google Book Search skyrocketed. Being on the first page of search results is clearly powerful, as search marketers obviously know. As for Google Groups, it didn't change. This may be because Google Groups links never always appeared, in contrast to Google Book Search links, which seem to always show up. It could also be that more people find the Google Book Search link more relevant.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:57 AM | Permalink

December 13, 2005

A Look Back as Google's Library Project Passes the One Year Mark

Tomorrow, the Google Library Project will be one year old. It's been quite a year of news and controversy. Here's a link to our first SearchDay article about the Google Library Project from December 14, 2004. In this article, I made sure to mention other digitization projects like Project Gutenberg that have been around since 1971.

What's crucial to remember is that Google Print (recently renamed Google Book Search) itself was around before Google's announcement to digitize the full or partial holdings of five large university libraries.

Let's review.

Google Print for books (materials direct from publishers) was opened "widely To publishers" on October 6, 2004. However, the existence of Google Print goes back even before that to December 17, 2003, when Google began offering book searches. The original Google Book search indexed, "only a small excerpt from each book, typically taken from the inside cover, jacket reviews, author biographies or the book's introduction.

To this day, Google Book Search (the material direct from publishers) and the Google Library Project are frequently confused. SEW BLOG has tried to make the differences clear since day one. Recently, Danny did a great job of explaining the important differences in his post: Once Again -- The Difference Between Google Print & Google Library. This post also contains links to many other articles about the project, digitization, and opinion about copyright issues.

The remainder of this post will offer a few key posts about the project (yes, I could have included more), a timeline of sorts, from the past year, along with links to some other Google Print/Book Search/Library Project related documents.

+ Questions & Answers Recap On Google Library This Info Today article by Barbara Quint is loaded with details about the project.

+ France, Google & The Need for Digitization Project Cooperation

+ Copyright Questions On Google Digitization Project

+ Some Publishers Not Happy With Google's Library Digitization Program

+ Google Library Digitization Agreement With University Of Michigan Now Available

+ The Digitization Of The Library

+ More On Publisher Concerns On Google Library Project

+ Google Gives Publishers Opt-Out From Library Scanning Project; One Group Still Not Happy

+ More Publishing Trade Groups Weigh In On Changes to Google's Library Scanning Project

+ Legal Experts Say Google Library Digitization Project Likely OK; Will It Revolve Around Snippets?

+ Breaking Down The Google Print 5 Libraries An article from Digital Libraries.

+ Google's Library Scanning Project Heads to Court

+ A New Alternative to Google Print Say hello to the Open Content Alliance!

+ Google Print Press Review & Just A Bit About Search Inside the Book This post includes a link to Eric Schmidt's op/ed column in the Wall St. Journal.

+ Association of American Publishers Sues Google over Library Digitization Plan

+ Great Google Print Controversy Bibliography Includes link to, "The Google Print Controversy: A Bibliography" by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. Impressive!!!

+ Microsoft Announces MSN Book Search; Joins Open Content Alliance

+ Google Gears Up to Resume Book Scanning

+ Google Print Now Publishing Out-Of-Copyright Works Gained Through Library Scanning Program

Yes, it has been quite a year and I could have listed more reports. I'm sure year two will have as many, if not, news stories, court hearings and events as the The Google Library Project's first 365 days.

Postscipt: I've recently posted about two other services, currently available, that offer the full text (no limit on how much you can read) called ebrary and NetLibrary. Looking for public domain full text books? Visit, "Public Domain Books: More than 25,000 Full Text Books in a Single Database."

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread, Google's Library Project One Year Old Already.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:50 PM | Permalink

November 28, 2005

Legal Issues for Google Library Project in Europe

The Information World Review (IWR is a VNU publication) article: Google digitisation faces Euro legal challenge, reports on Google's book digitisation project (the Google Library Project to be precise) facing some legal obstacles in Europe.

Here it is in a nutshell, direct from the article: Google has acknowledged that it cannot digitise copyright material from European libraries, according to the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).

The article goes on to say that in meeting last month Google agreed that: ...it was "absolutely the case that it is not allowed to [digitise in-copyright material from libraries] in Europe.

At the moment, The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is the only one of the "Google Five" libraries located in Europe. This post has more about the holdings of all five libraries including in-copyright and public domain holdings.

ALPSP chief executive Sally Morris said that she is planning to create a system that will make it easy for Google, the Open Content Alliance, or any other organization wanting to digitise material.

She told the Bookseller: "The fact Google recognise they can't do this without permission in Europe gives us a threshold to work out a way for them to get permission. In America, they have the law on their side. Here, they accept they don't."

Her suggestions, put to Google at the meeting, include a Canadian model whereby, if it proves impossible to locate a copyright owner, a licence is granted so the material can be used legally.

Morris also told IWR that she is waiting to here back from Google on these issues. She said that Google was interested.

Btw, Danny chatted with the ALPSP's Sally Morris in this blog post.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:22 PM | Permalink

November 25, 2005

CustomizeGoogle Gains Blog; Pitches New Feature To Override Google Book Search Print Restriction

CustomizeGoogle (CG), the popular and award winning Firefox extension that offers numerous options to customize the search engine (including one option to remove ads from most Google results pages) now has its own blog that's located here.

The most recent blog post mentions that an update to CustomizeGoogle now, "makes it easy to removes[sic] image copying restrictions in Google Book Search (aka Google Print)." The CG home page puts it this way:

Removes image copying restrictions in Google Book Search

This is accomplished by first heading to the "Book" tab in CG and selecting, "Restore Right-Click Context Menu" and then placing your cursor on a page from a book.

I don't believe this feature allows you to print Google Book Search content by just clicking and selecting print. When I tested, I didn't see pages from a book but only the material surrounding the actual page.

However, using the right-click menu (now easily enabled for CustomizedGoogle) and placing a cursor on a page from a book, I was able to quickly isolate the page (as a JPEG file) and then print, save, convert, etc. I was also able to isolate direct urls to book pages and send them via email. You can even save book pages as wallpaper on your PC.

As we've pointed out on this blog before as well as others mentioning it in their writing, content in Google Book Search, particulary new in-copyright content, is not supposed to be printable (short of screen caps).

Of course, limits about how many in-copyright "Sample Pages" you can view are still in place and the "copyrighted material" text is still visible on each page. Google Book Search does offer the full view of public domain materials.

It will be interesting to see how (if at all) Google and participating publishers respond to this new option since it's coming from such a highly lauded software program.

Postscript from the CustomizeGoogle Developer (via Email): Before, Google disabled right click. With CustomizeGoogle, right click is enabled again, and now you can right click choose save image/view image/etc.

Google also have some restrictions on how many book pages you can view in a single session or per day. If you anonymize your Google ID, you should be able to view more book pages. However, I haven't tested it so I don't really know if it does work.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:54 PM | Permalink

November 22, 2005

Library of Congress Announces World Digital Library Project; Google Donates $3 Million To Effort

Google's involved in another digital library program, this time one being backed by the US Library of Congress. The World Digital Library aims to collect the world's "rare and unique cultural materials" in a digital format to make them accessible to anyone. The program is being kicked off with $3 million in funding from Google. Today's SearchDay article, World Digital Library Project Announced, Backed By Library Of Congress & Google, has more details on the plan.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forum thread, World Digital Library Project.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2005

Harvard's Involvement in Google Library Project

Katie Hafner's NY Times article: At Harvard, A Man, a Plan, and a Scanner offers a profile of Sidney Verba, Director of the University Library at Harvard that focuses on Harvard's partnership with Google (in this case, a "pilot project") to scan books held in the university's library.

From the article:

"It's [Google Print/Google Book Search] become much more controversial than I would have expected," Mr. Verba said. "I was surprised by the vehemence.

For the time being, Harvard has confined the scanning of its collections largely to books in the public domain and limited the initial scanning to about 40,000 volumes. But it hopes eventually to scan copyrighted books as well, depending on the outcome of the legal dispute. "The thing that consoles me," Mr. Verba said, "is Google's notion of showing only the snippets, which have everything to do with what's in the book, but nothing to do with reading the book."

The article also offers a bit of background on how Google first contacted Harvard and the University of Michigan about the program.

Quick comment:

+ While the academic and library research value of the Google Print project is massive and Google should be commended, it's important to remember that Google's plan to digitize this massive amount of material is about selling books (in various formats) versus gaining accessing to them via a local library or interlibrary loan.

This was made clear in an a comment made by Google's David Drummond in a comment made by Google's David Drummond, in a recent Google Print debate.

To which Google's Mr. Drummond [Google's general counsel] replied, "Horrors."

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