Proposed Google Book Search Settlement Rejected

The long-awaited decision on the Google Book Search settlement came out this week, with Judge Chin rejecting the current proposal. If you recall, this is the case involving the Author's Guild and their claims of copyright infringement resulting from Google's mass scanning of library content. The story is expected to get wide-spread coverage this week. For example, see the Wall Street Journal article from yesterday afternoon.

In his decision, Judge Chin wrote:

While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the [Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA)] would simply go oo far. It would permit this class action—which was brought against defendant Google Inc. to challenge its scanning of books and display of “snippets” for on-line searching—to implement a forward-looking business arrangement that would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners. Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.

The question now is, "What's next?" The judge did indicate that switching from opt-out to opt-in would resolve many of the concerns. That certainly would help for books in print, and perhaps even for many of the books out of print, but what about the many orphan works that exist? Secondarily, what does this mean for bookstores signing up with Google Editions? Or more generally, what does it mean for Google?

Google eBooks launches

Today Google launched its online bookstore called Google eBooks. Up until this point, the program has been referred to as Google Editions. According to an article from Wired, the e-book store will have about 2.8 million books that are no longer under copyright and were scanned through the Google Books project. The store will have another 200,000 books that have been licensed from publishers. Users will be able to read the books on Apple devices, Barnes & Noble Nooks, Sony E-readers, and computers. The books will not be accessible on the Amazon Kindle because of compatibility issues.

In addition, Google has partnered with some independent bookstores to allow them to sell e-books on their websites and share the revenue. Google also plans to add social networking features and says it has the infrastructure in place to let consumers purchase digital and paper copies in a bundle.

James Crawford, an engineer for Google eBooks, noted, “The idea is that you buy where you are and read on devices you already own. We are committed to open structure, and building up a wider and wider retailer network.”

The Google ebookstore can be found here.

Google Editions

Digital Book World recently featured a posting with a good summary of what we know and don’t know about Google Editions. As we have discussed in previous postings, Google Editions is expected to launch this summer. Here is a link to the posting.

Google Editions versus DRM

One of our interns, Nic, has been researching DRM and the issues surrounding it. Here is another one of his posts:

As we have mentioned in the past few posts, DRM is currently a major issue in the ebook industry, with many proponents pushing for different models with the aspiration of balancing between the publisher’s protection from piracy and the consumer’s experience and desires. Currently, there is very little interoperability between e-reading devices, which is problematic and somewhat disorienting for the consumer. Buyers want the freedom to read their e-books on other devices; this is especially a concern due to there being so many different e-readers currently on the market, so many companies working on producing the next generation round of devices, and the indeterminable question of which products will consumers want to be using in the future.

A recent article from FutureBook makes the bold claim that, thanks to its upcoming Google Editions, Google may have already won the eBook war due to circumventing these issues. The article draws comparisons to the music industry, and it goes on to predict a trend towards device agnostic reading. Books purchased through Google Editions are stored in the cloud, allowing users to access their books through any device capable of connecting to the internet, and, due to this, Google will be in a great position to seize market share in the industry if other companies continue with their DRM policies of limited-to-no device interoperability,

“The industry needs to grow digitally to last, and we need to start thinking uncomfortable thoughts about how we help readers access books in the way they want before companies like Google lock up the market.”

Google Edition to launch in Japan

In October, Google announced that its Google Edition program that will let publishers sell in-print digital books directly to consumers will launch in the U.S. and Europe in June 2010. According to MarketWatch, the program will also launch in Japan by the end of next year. It is hoped that 10,000 e-books will be available when the service launches. The article notes that leading publishers in Japan are wary of the program due to the controversy surrounding Google Book Search.

Google discusses vision for digital books

A recent posting from MediaBistro features interesting commentary from Google Books engineering director, Dan Clancy, about Google’s vision for the future of digital books. Mr. Clancy noted that the vision for the future is about new digital books and is separate from Google’s settlement which is its plan for out-of-print books. As noted in a previous posting, Google’s plan has been referred to as Google Editions which will let publishers sell in-print e-books direct to consumers.

Mr. Clancy outlined three requirements for this initiative including – digital books will be stored in the cloud (the books will be stored on a Google server and not on personal computers or devices but users will be able to access their books at anytime), the ability to read Google books on any device, and the ability for Google to partner with all interested retailers so that consumers can buy Google editions of digital books at brick and mortar bookstores and also online.

Mr. Clancy commented on the importance of the ability to buy digital books in bookstores by saying, “Right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem. A huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. It's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model."

An article from Book Business points out that this plan will place Google in between the publishers and the consumers potentially giving them too much control over content and pricing which is also of great concern with Amazon.

Google to begin selling e-books through Google Edition

An article from The New York Times says that Google has plans to launch an initiative called Google Edition which will let publishers sell in-print e-books direct to consumers. The new initiative is separate from Google Book Search but will utilize a feature from Google’s Partner Program that allows users to preview up to 20 percent of a book and select links to online retailers where the books are available for purchase. With Google Edition, the users will be able to purchase those e-books directly through Google. This new program will give Google an e-book store similar to Amazon’s and therefore put the two companies in direct competition for control of the e-book market. (For those booksellers reading, this means in direct competition with us as much as each other.) Google plans to implement a similar pricing strategy as Amazon where publishers set wholesale prices but Google and Amazon control the consumer prices. It will be interesting to see the price that Google charges for the e-books because publishers have expressed much concern over the sustainability of Amazon’s low pricing. Recent reports say that Amazon is selling the e-books at a loss in an effort to sell more Kindles but that customers have already become accustomed to the low price tag. The article notes that some details of Google Edition are still being worked out but publishers that were briefed on the plans are optimistic about the program. Google Edition is expected to go live later this year.

Note: The New York Times posted a correction to the original piece and this posting has been updated to reflect the correction.