Google Book Search is the ambitious plan to digitize every book, in every language, published anywhere on earth, found in the world's libraries, as part of Google's core mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
The project, which began in 2002, has grown into a multibillion dollar effort, involving the mind-boggling logistics of scanning so many pages of text and surmounting copyright issues. It is hard to imagine many other companies with the sheer ambition and deep pockets that such an endeavor requires.
There is no doubt that the project has the potential to bring tremendous benefits to society. Books that are unavailable to most of us for a myriad of reasons - antiquity, obscurity, being out of print - would literally come back to life. Indeed, the phrase, "out of print" could risk becoming endangered itself. The ability to literally call up almost any book in the world on a computer screen seems like a wonderful facility. The ways in which such a facility might transform productivity are hard to imagine. Giving almost anyone anywhere access to the worlds greatest library collections is likely to be a tremendous boon, especially to people in poor and backward parts of the planet. This might "flatten the world" further, to paraphrase Thomas Friedman.
So why the fuss? Last October, Google reached a settlement with authors and publishers to end a class-action lawsuit that challenged the legality of the scanning project. Under the settlement, Google will pay $125 million and create a framework for a new system that will compensate authors and publishers whose books are still under copyright from book sales, advertising revenue and other fees, leaving a cut for Google.
A coalition has formed to oppose the proposed class-action settlement, which is awaiting court approval. Tentatively called the Open Book Alliance, it includes nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations. The group argues that the proposed settlement is anticompetitive. Curiously, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo recently announced plans to join the alliance.
What's the problem here? Most of Google's products (search, gmail, calendar, docs, gadgets,...) are free and convenient for many of us end-users. A concern is that as we become more dependent and comfortable with Google's suite of complementary products, we become less likely to switch to those of a competitor. This kind of "lock-in" and "switching costs" (economics jargon alert) translates into market power for Google. Currently this manifests itself in online advertising fees and revenue for Google. But if Google becomes dominant in digital books, there is concern that Google's monopoly power could lead to pricing power on books, subscriptions to libraries for access to Google Books and so on.
There is more than a bit of irony in the fact that Amazon plans to join the Open Book Alliance and oppose Google. Could Google Book Search do to Amazon what Amazon has done to independent booksellers?
And what of bricks and mortar bookshops? Newer copyrighted books may not be available under Google Book Search unless copyright holders agree to have their books available there. Another glimmer of hope here is the idea that many readers will want to turn those digital copies into paper copies, which could be individually printed by a bookstores in the neighborhood. In fact, Google Book Search has already entered into partnership with On Demand Books, which sells a $100,000 Espresso Book Machine, which booksellers can buy. The machine prints the pages, binds them together perfectly, cuts the book to size and then dumps a book out, literally off the press, with a satisfying clunk.
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