2005: GOOGLE GETS INTERESTED IN EBOOKS
= [Overview]
The beta version of Google Print went live in May 2005. In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google Print as a project aimed at publishers, for internet users to be able to see excerpts from their books and order them online. In December 2004, Google launched the second part of Google Print as a project intended for libraries, to build up a world digital library by digitizing the collections of main partner libraries. In August 2005, Google Print was stopped until further notice because of lawsuits filed by associations of authors and publishers for copyright infringement. The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of Google Books. Google Books has offered books digitized in the participating libraries (Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford, California, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison, Complutense of Madrid and New York Public Library), with either the full text for public domain books or excerpts for copyrighted books. Google settled a lawsuit with associations of authors and publishers in October 2008, with an agreement to be signed in 2009.
= Google Print
In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google Print as a project aimed at publishers, for internet users to be able to see excerpts from their books and order them online. In December 2004, Google launched the second part of Google Print as a project intended for libraries, to build up a digital library of 15 million books by digitizing the collections of main partner libraries, beginning with the universities of Michigan (7 million books), Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, and the New York Public Library. The planned cost in 2004 was an average of US $10 per book, and a total budget of $150 to $200 million for ten years. The beta version of Google Print went live in May 2005. In August 2005, Google Print was stopped until further notice because of lawsuits filed by associations of authors and publishers for copyright infringement.
= Google Books
The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of Google Books. Google Books has offered excerpts from books digitized by Google in the participating libraries - that now included Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford, California, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison, Complutense of Madrid and New York Public Library. Google Books provided the full text for public domain books and excerpts for copyrighted books. According to some media buzz, Google was scanning 3,000 books a day.
The inclusion of copyrighted works in Google Books was widely criticized by authors and publishers worldwide. In the U.S., lawsuits were filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for alleged copyright infringement. The assumption was that the full scanning and digitizing of copyrighted books infringed copyright laws, even if only snippets were made freely available. Google replied this was "fair use", referring to short excerpts from copyrighted books that could be lawfully quoted in another book or website, as long as the source (author, title, publisher) was mentioned. After three years of conflict, Google reached a settlement with the associations of authors and publishers in October 2008, with an agreement to be signed in 2009.
As of December 2008, Google had 24 library partners, including
a Swiss one (University Library of Lausanne), a French one
(Lyon Municipal Library), a Belgian one (Ghent University
Library), a German one (Bavarian State Library), two Spanish
ones (National Library of Catalonia and University Complutense
of Madrid) and a Japanese one (Keio University Library). The
U.S. partner libraries were, by alphabetical order: Columbia
University, Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC),
Cornell University Library, Harvard University, New York Public
Library, Oxford University, Princeton University, Stanford
University, University of California, University of Michigan,
University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia and
University of Wisconsin-Madison.