A Perspective on Google Book Search. (cover story)

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Author: Turvey, Tom1

A Perspective on Google Book Search

Viewpoint: Google Offers its Side

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We started by making it possible to search information that's available on the Internet. But the real challenge is that most of the world's information isn't online--and therefore isn't easily discoverable, as we believe it could be and should be.

We're working to change that with Google Book Search. Just as we help our users find Web pages, we're partnering with authors, publishers, and libraries to make it possible for anyone anywhere, to discover the vast ocean of knowledge that resides within books of all languages--a global resource that will forever be difficult to fully access unless people can search digitally.

Think of a world in which a South African student can instantly find a reference to every book that mentions the Battle of Hastings or a Venezuelan researcher can study one of the 49 extant copies of the Gutenberg Bible. Imagine sitting at your computer and browsing a digital card catalog that searches the full text of millions of books and directs you to the places where you can purchase a title or to libraries where you can find it.

How will this vision become a reality? In our Google Book Search Partner Program, Google is working with thousands of the world's largest publishers (e.g., Cambridge University Press, HarperCollins, Blackwell, etc.) to include their books in our search results so that millions of people who use Google every day can discover these titles. In the Google Book Search Library Project, we're also working with great library collections to digitize their older books that are bard to find. These library partners include Harvard, the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library, Stanford University, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Making books easier to find has raised a new set of concerns and issues for some: Google Book Search has encountered strong opposition from certain publisher and author groups. For those following this debate, I want to highlight the tenets Google abides by.

• Google respects the rights of content owners. That's why we've designed Google Book Search specifically to help publishers and authors sell more books. Anyone who finds a book that is still in copyright through Google Book Search can only see basic bibliographical information--just as you might in a library card catalog entry--and a few lines of text, not even a full page. We show more only when a publisher or author has explicitly given his/her permission by joining our Partner Program. In that case, viewers can look at a limited number of pages to decide if they want to buy it--much as they would when browsing in a bookstore.

These partnerships are based on mutual respect and mutual interest. Publishers can stimulate interest in their authors and increase sales, and we, in turn, hope to benefit from increased traffic because we have provided a useful service to people. Google doesn't generate any revenue when we refer users to online retailers, and where publishers have agreed to accept advertising on book pages, publishers receive the majority of that revenue. Indeed, Google's interests and those of our industry partners go hand in hand. The more successful writers and publishers become through Google Book Search, the more successful we become.

• Google Book Search Library Project is a legal fair use. The critics of our Library Project (which is separate from our Partner Program) argue that we shouldn't be allowed to scan copyrighted books in libraries, even if we only ever show a few sentences of text (we never show even one page of a book without permission--see the figure on this page). They believe this conservative sampling of the book represents a violation of the law and is a threat to their businesses. We believe that copying itself is legal; it's what you do with content that matters. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to record copyrighted TV shows to watch later, and search engines wouldn't be able to index copyrighted Web pages to help you find them. The fair use doctrine in U.S. copyright law outlines the rules for legal uses of copyrighted content without permission, and the Google Book Search Library Project meets this definition by any fair analysis.

The arguments against Google Book Search remind us of arguments we've observed in other industries. More than 30 years ago, some in the movie business complained that the videocassette recorder (VCR) would lead to their demise. Indeed, the studios sued VCR manufacturers as copyright violators and went to the U.S. Supreme Court to make their case. Luckily for both producers and consumers, the studios lost, and the VCR--and the next-gene ration DVD--have become the most profitable distribution channels in the history of the film industry.

• Google Book Search stimulates interest and sales for publishers and authors. We passionately believe Google Book Search represents an opportunity for authors and publishers that is as great, if not greater, than the VCR and DVD are for the film business. There are many benefits to participating in Google Book Search. Publishers and authors can promote their books for free to the millions of people who use Google; they can sell more books at both traditional and online booksellers, and they can generate revenue with targeted ads on their book pages.

This program bas the potential to breathe new life into entire categories of books (e.g., out-of-print and backlist titles) by making them discoverable again. This benefits not only publishers but also authors, who can make a living simply because the Web has made it so much easier for readers to find them.

PHOTO (COLOR): The contribution Google Book Search can make to such discovery will be determined in the months and years to come. We believe that the program enhances the value of copyrights while it makes books easier to find, read, and buy.

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By Tom Turvey

Tom Turvey is head of partnerships for Google Book Search. Send your comments about this article to itletters@infotoday.com.

To Have and to Hold

Viewpoint: Association of American Publishers

[Editor's Note: The Association of American Publishers (http://www.publishers.org) has taken a stand on Google Book Search, previously called the Google Print Library Project. Here is its viewpoint.]

The siren song of Google's oft-quoted corporate mission, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," is seductive in its promise to benefit humanity. But like all Utopian visions, this one has its limitations dictated by countervailing public interests, such as the right to privacy, security considerations, and the ability to own property.

We leave it to others--and there are many--to raise critical questions regarding privacy and security, not to mention the wisdom of allowing one corporation, no matter how noble its rhetoric, to organize and control all of the world's information.

Our concern here, as publishers and authors, is with Google [Book Search]. Announced a year ago, Google [Book Search] involves an arrangement with three major academic libraries to make complete digital copies of millions of books, many of which are still under copyright, to be stored on Google's computers, used to promote its search engine and advertising operations, and given to participating libraries. To protect the creative work of their authors from unauthorized exploitation for commercial gain, publishers are asking the federal courts to declare this arrangement a willful infringement of copyright.

We realize that in some quarters "copyright" has become the ultimate term of disapprobation--an evil plot by faceless corporations to choke off creativity, destroy the Internet, suppress free speech (and probably promote global warming). In fact, copyright is nothing more than a long-accepted legal safeguard that allows writers and their publishers, photographers, visual artists, choreographers, composers, and all manner of other creative spirits to benefit, for a limited time, from their own work.

Writers write and publishers publish in order to be part of the global human conversation. We enthusiastically embrace the Internet for its role in democratizing and expanding that conversation to a degree not previously imaginable, for its promise of a universal dialogue that will transcend physical barriers and defeat tyrannical censorship. As publishers, we recognize the need to organize and rationalize the information that fuels the global dialogue and are involved with a host of partners to make our authors' works accessible, searchable, and available to the broadest possible audience on the Internet without abandoning copyright protection. Among them, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, and the Internet Archive are creating projects and models that honor the rights of creators.

Google also honored this principle in its original book search effort, the Print Publisher Program. But as Google's vision of itself grew grander ( after all, co-founder Sergey Brin once said, "The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God"), its arrogant assumption has been that its destiny places it above the law.

There is no question that Google has created an amazing search engine, with an even more amazing potential. There is also no question that without exciting, interesting, well-researched, and well-written information, Google would have nothing to search.

With all of its progressive rhetoric, Google tends to obscure the fact that it is a $90 billion profit-making, publicly held corporation with the interests of stockholders and partners to serve. It is not, Mr. Brin notwithstanding, "the mind of God." Its size and power and creative vision cannot be used as justification to abrogate rights and property that belong to others even if it is "for their own good," as Google bas asserted.

If Google is allowed to rewrite the law, seize copyrighted works without permission or compensation to their owners, and use these works to increase its own wealth and power under the guise of "fair use," then no creative enterprise that depends on intellectual property protection will be safe from Google's particular version of "eminent domain." Authors and publishers may be Google's first targets, but they certainly won't be the last.

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