About That Flaw in Google Print.

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Author: Quint, Barbara bquint@m.indspring.com

You know how I've always said that I'm never wrong--occasionally inaccurate, but never wrong?

Well, it's finally happened. I was wrong … wrong big-time. Somewhere along the line, I got the impression that Google Print sent digital copies of the printed books to the participating publishers that contributed them to the program.

I even thought that, under the August adjustments that Google offered to mollify litigious leanings among unhappy publishers, the publishers could receive digital copies of their books even when the books entered Google Print from participating library collections.

Wrong. Google Print gives back digital files to the five giant research libraries participating in Google Print, but it never gives anything to publishers. The files it gives to the libraries aren't even Adobe PDFs--they're sets of page image files (usually TIFFs, occasionally JPEGs) accompanied by matching OCR searchable text files.

The shock of discovering this major error drove me to re-examine all my past Google Print reporting and commentary. For a complete list of corrections, ranging from minor to medium to major, check out my "CORRECTIONS: Google Print Not All I Said It Was" NewsBreak (http:// www.infotoday.coin/newsbreaks/nb05082 9-1.shtml). For the explanation I offered my own Searcher magazine readers, see my editorial in the October issue. It's entitled "Apology" (http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/oct05/voice.shtml).

And now I must correct the misleading remarks I made in three Information Today columns: "Digital Books: More Value-Added, Please" (January 2005); "The Day the World Changed: Google Takes Command" (February 2005); and "Bookblogs or Blogbooks? Are Formats on the Way?" (April 2005).

What makes this march of shame so particularly painful is that, as wrong as I was, I still wasn't wrong … if you know what I mean. Let me explain.

Google's stated goal in establishing the Google Print program is to encourage its hosts of Web users to turn to book literature as well as the Web for their information and entertainment needs. This is a fine, laudable goal. One of the defenses for Google's apparent fiddling with copyright is in its claim that the project will only help publishers, authors, and even bookstores make sales. But how can that goal be achieved unless those Web users can reach the literature that Google Print searches uncover? Can the system fetch as well as find?

Knowing Web searchers' addiction for instant gratification, Google Print must at least offer electronic delivery as part of its search process. That means electronic books. If you don't agree, notice bow Google Print handles public domain books (those books not protected by copyright). It delivers them directly to the user on Google.

In the original Google Print program (now called Google Print for Publishers), the individual publishers decided which items to submit to the program. In effect, they could decide what they--or their online/offline bookstore outlets--had in stock and wanted to promote.

But even here, the need to create an inventory of digital books was only delayed, not eliminated. The content in the Google Print program differs from all the other content Google handles. As I pointed out in my April IT column, it is "digital stone"; it doesn't change. Once book content enters Google Print, it never goes away (or at least not with Google's best wishes). So, inevitably, it is only a matter of time before the items Google Print's participating publishers submit cease to be available--or easily available--in print.

So what's the result? We have unhappy users wasting their time looking for material they cannot get satisfactorily. We have unhappy publishers making no sales and, as part of one odd option presented in the August 2005 amelioration offers, possibly alienating present and future shoppers by assuming the burden of telling them that they cannot have what Google Print has led them to want. We have unhappy authors neither making royalty money from sales nor even gaining any psychic rewards from knowing people around the World Wide Web are reading their immortal words.

Of course, when Google Print for Libraries was launched, Google tapped into a world of out-of-print material, making the problem much worse. I would hazard to guess (still a risk-taker, even now) that most of the material on most library shelves is out of print. It doesn't take guesswork (just logic) to confirm that fact in the case of the matchless collections of five of the world's leading research libraries.

In the case of this material, Google Print has added a connection to OCLC's Open WorldCat, but here, the very "matchless" quality of those research library holdings can almost ensure the unlikelihood that the collections of nearby libraries will offer reliable access, even at the "snail-mail" speed scorned by Web users but required by corner libraries for finding and fetching books.

In the meantime, as of mid-September, the Google Print project continued to march ahead. In a response to several publisher organizations grumbling about copyright violations, Google did put a short moratorium on digitizing in-copyright books from library shelves. The 3-month moratorium was scheduled to end in early November, however, and--just to keep busy, I expect--Google announced it would expand its program to foreign publishers (European ones in particular).

So what's this all about? Why put a half-billion or more dollars into a multiyear project that seems to be designed to dissatisfy all parties? Some Luddites and conspiracy theorists to whom I have defended the Google Print project in glowing terms over the last few months--basking in my mistaken assumptions--have grumbled warnings of "world conquest" and Google megalomania and quoted Lord Acton about absolute power corrupting absolutely. "Pish, tosh," I said to them.

Now I'm beginning to wonder myself. Even paranoids can have enemies. And in a world where I can be wrong, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Personally, I think Google should make electronic books available to Google Print copyright holders for delivery at will. I think that it should assist the integration of print-on-demand services for customers not interested in reading a book online. I think it should create a platform for new hook-oriented services that revolutionize the worlds of publishing and libraries and authorship itself.

I think Google should make me right again. Please.

In a recent Harris Poll conducted for Verizon VoiceWing broadband phone service, 1,066 adults were asked to define VoIP. From a list of choices, 20 percent said they thought it was a hybrid car from Europe; 10 percent said it was a low-carbohydrate vodka; and 87 percent weren't aware that "Voice over Internet Protocol" allows phone calls to be carried over the Internet rather than traditional telephone networks.

Source: http://www.verizon.com

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With Barbara Quint

Barbara Quint is editor of Searcher magazine. Send your comments about this column to itletters@infotoday.com