Google Books screenshot |
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| Developer(s) | |
| Operating system | Any (web based application) |
| Type | Online Library Book Search |
| Website | books.google.com |
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search and Google Print) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. Google's Library Project, also now known as Google Book Search, was announced in December 2004.
Results from Google Book Search show up in both general web search at google.com and through the dedicated Google Books site (books.google.com). Up to three results from the Google Books index may be displayed, if relevant, above other search results in the Google Web search service (google.com).
Subscribing users can click on a result from Google Books that opens an interface in which the user may view pages from the book, if out of copyright or if the copyright owner has given permission. Books in the public domain are available in "full view" and free for download. For in-print books, Google limits the number of viewable pages through a variety of access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking.[1] For books that may be covered by copyright and where the owner has not been identified, only "snippets" (two to three lines of text) are shown, though the full text of the book is searchable.
Most scanned works are no longer in print or commercially available.[2] For those which are, the site provides links to the website of the publisher and booksellers.
The Google Books database continues to grow. For users outside the United States, though, Google must be sure that the work in question is indeed out of copyright under local laws. According to a member of the Google Books Support Team, "Since whether a book is in the public domain can often be a tricky legal question, we err on the side of caution and display at most a few snippets until we have determined that the book has entered the public domain."[3] Users outside the United States can however access a large number of public domain books scanned by Google using copies stored on the Internet Archive.[4]
Many of the books are scanned using the Elphel 323 camera[5][6] at a rate of 1,000 pages per hour.[7]
The initiative has been hailed for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online corpus of human knowledge[8][9] and promoting the democratization of knowledge,[10] but it has also been criticized for potential copyright violations.[10][11]
As of 2010[update], the number of scanned books is over 15 million.[12] Google estimated in 2010 that there are about 130 million unique books in the world,[13][14] and that it intends to scan all of them by the end of the decade.[14]
Contents |
December 2004 Google signaled an extension to its Google Print initiative known as the Google Print Library Project.[21] Google announced partnerships with several high-profile university and public libraries, including the University of Michigan, Harvard (Harvard University Library), Stanford (Green Library), Oxford (Bodleian Library), and the New York Public Library. According to press releases and university librarians, Google plans to digitize and make available through its Google Books service approximately 15 million volumes within a decade. The announcement soon triggered controversy, as publisher and author associations challenged Google's plans to digitize, not just books in the public domain, but also titles still under copyright.
September–October 2005 Two lawsuits against Google charge that the company has not respected copyrights and has failed to properly compensate authors and publishers. One is a class action suit on behalf of authors (Authors Guild v. Google, Sept. 20 2005) and the other is a civil lawsuit brought by five large publishers and the Association of American Publishers. (McGraw Hill v. Google, Oct. 19 2005)[11][22][23][24][25][26]
November 2005: Google changed the name of this service from Google Print to Google Book Search.[27] Its program enabling publishers and authors to include their books in the service was renamed "Google Books Partner Program"[28] and the partnership with libraries became Google Books Library Project.
August 2006: The University of California System announced that it would join the Books digitization project. This includes a portion of the 34 million volumes within the approximately 100 libraries managed by the System.[29]
September 2006: The Complutense University of Madrid becomes the first Spanish-language library to join the Google Books Library Project.[30]
October 2006: The University of Wisconsin–Madison announced that it would join the Book Search digitization project along with the Wisconsin Historical Society Library. Combined, the libraries have 7.2 million holdings.[31]
November 2006: The University of Virginia joins the project. Its libraries contain more than five million volumes and more than 17 million manuscripts, rare books and archives.[32]
January 2007: The University of Texas at Austin announced that it would join the Book Search digitization project. At least one million volumes will be digitized from the University's 13 library locations.
March 2007: The Bavarian State Library announced a partnership with Google to scan more than a million public domain and out-of-print works in German as well as English, French, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.[33]
May 2007: A book digitizing project partnership was announced jointly by Google and the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne.[34]
May 2007: The Boekentoren Library of Ghent University will participate with Google in digitizing and making digitized versions of 19th century books in the French and Dutch languages available online.[35]
June 2007: The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) announced that its twelve member libraries would participate in scanning 10 million books over the course of the next six years.[36]
July 2007: Keio University became Google's first library partner in Japan with the announcement that they would digitize at least 120,000 public domain books.[37]
August 2007: Google announced that it would digitize up to 500,000 both copyrighted and public domain items from Cornell University Library. Google will also provide a digital copy of all works scanned to be incorporated into the university's own library system.[38]
September 2007: Google added a feature that allows users to share snippets of books that are in the public domain. The snippets may appear exactly as they do in the scan of the book or as plain text.[39]
September 2007: Google debuts a new feature called "My Library" which allows users to create personal customized libraries, selections of books that they can label, review, rate, or full-text search.[40]
December 2007: Columbia University was added as a partner in digitizing public domain works.[41]
May 2008: Microsoft tapers off and plans to end its scanning project which reached 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles.[42]
October 2008: A settlement is reached between the publishing industry and Google after two years of negotiation. Google agrees to compensate authors and publishers in exchange for the right to make millions of books available to the public.[11][43]
November 2008: Google reaches the 7 million book mark for items scanned by Google and by their publishing partners. 1 million are in full preview mode and 1 million are fully viewable and downloadable public domain works. About five million are currently out of print.[2][44][45]
December 2008: Google announces the inclusion of magazines in Google Books. Titles include New York Magazine, Ebony, Popular Mechanics, and others.[46][47]
May 2009: At the annual BookExpo convention in New York, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google.[48]
In December 2009 a French court shut down the scanning of copyrighted books published in France saying it violated copyright laws. It was the first major legal loss for the scanning project.[49]
April 2010: Visual artists were not included in the previous lawsuit and settlement, and are the plaintiff groups in another law suit, and say they intend to bring more than just Google Books under scrutiny. “The new class action,” reads the statement, “goes beyond Google’s Library Project, and includes Google’s other systematic and pervasive infringements of the rights of photographers, illustrators and other visual artists.” [50]
May 2010 : It is reported that Google will launch a digital book store termed as Google Editions.[51] It will compete with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and other electronic book retailers with its very own e-book store. Unlike others, Google Editions will be completely online and will not require a specific device (such as kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.).
June 2010: Google passes 12 million books scanned.[14]
August 2010: It was announced that Google intends to scan all known existing 129,864,880 books by the end of the decade, accounting to over 4 billion digital pages and 2 trillion words in total.[14]
December 2010: Google eBooks (Google Editions) is launched in the US.[52]
March 2011: A federal judge rejects the settlement reached between the publishing industry and Google.[53]
The number of participating institutions has grown since the inception of the Google Books Library Project;[21] The University of Mysore has been mentioned in many media reports as being a library partner.[54][55] They are not, however, listed as a partner by Google.[56]
Other institutional partners have joined the Project since the partnership was first announced.
The publishing industry and writers' groups have criticized the project's inclusion of snippets of copyrighted works as infringement. In late 2005 the Authors Guild of America and Association of American Publishers separately sued Google, citing "massive copyright infringement." Google countered that its project represented a fair use and is the digital age equivalent of a card catalog with every word in the publication indexed.[11] Despite Google taking measures to provide full text of only works in public domain, and providing only a searchable summary online for books still under copyright protection, publishers maintain that Google has no right to copy full text of books with copyrights and save them, in large amounts, into its own database.[57]
Other lawsuits followed but in 2006 a German lawsuit was withdrawn.[58] In June 2006, Hervé de la Martinière,[59] a French publisher known as La Martinière and Éditions du Seuil,[60] announced its intention to sue Google France.[61] In 2009, the Paris Civil Court awarded €300,000 (approximately US$430,000) in damages and interest and ordered Google to pay €10,000 a day until it removes the publisher's books from its database.[60][62] The court wrote, "Google violated author copyright laws by fully reproducing and making accessible" books that Seuil owns without its permission[60] and that Google "committed acts of breach of copyright, which are of harm to the publishers".[59] Google said it will appeal.[60] Syndicat National de l'Edition, which joined the lawsuit, said Google has scanned about 100,000 French works under copyright.[60]
In December 2009, Chinese author Mian Mian filed a civil lawsuit for $8,900 against Google for scanning her novel, Acid Lovers. This is the first such lawsuit to be filed against Google in China.[63]
In March 2007, Thomas Rubin, associate general counsel for copyright, trademark, and trade secrets at Microsoft, accused Google of violating copyright law with their book search service. Rubin specifically criticized Google's policy of freely copying any work until notified by the copyright holder to stop.[64]
Siva Vaidhyanathan, associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia has argued[65] that the project poses a danger for the doctrine of fair use, because the fair use claims are arguably so excessive that it may cause judicial limitation of that right.[66] It can also be said that, because rights are almost always inherently limited in some way, judicial consideration per se, including limitation, of the principle poses no "threat" at all (and might produce benefit through articulated consideration and delineation - that would have not otherwise occurred - of the principle). Because Author's Guild v. Google did not go to court, the fair use dispute is left unresolved.
Google licensing of public domain works is also an area of concern due to using of digital watermarking techniques with the books. Some published works that are in the public domain, such as all works created by the U.S. Federal government, are still treated like other works under copyright, and therefore locked after 1922.[67]
The Authors Guild, the publishing industry and Google entered into a settlement agreement October 28, 2008, with Google agreeing to pay a total of $125 million to rights-holders of books they had scanned, to cover the plaintiffs' court costs, and to create a Book Rights Registry. The settlement has to be approved by the court, which could occur some time after October 2009.[11] Reaction to the settlement has been mixed, with Harvard Library, one of the original contributing libraries to Google Library, choosing to withdraw its partnership with Google if "more reasonable terms" cannot be found.[68] As part of the $125 million settlement signed in October 2008, Google created a Google Book Settlement web site that went active on February 11, 2009. This site allows authors and other rights holders of out-of-print (but copyright) books to submit a claim by June 5, 2010.[69] In return they will receive $60 per full book, or $5 to $15 for partial works.[69] In return, Google will be able to index the books and display snippets in search results, as well as up to 20% of each book in preview mode.[69] Google will also be able to show ads on these pages and make available for sale digital versions of each book.[69] Authors and copyright holders will receive 63 percent of all advertising and e-commerce revenues associated with their works.[69]
In the US, several organizations who took no part of the settlement, like the American Society of Journalists and Authors, criticized the settlement fundamentally.[70] Moreover, the New York book settlement is not restricted to US authors, but relevant to authors of the whole world. This led to objections even on the level of some European governments and critical voices in many European newspapers.[71] American author Ursula K. Le Guin has launched a petition against the settlement, which was signed by almost 300 authors.[72]
In October 2009, Google countered ongoing critics by stating that its scanning of books and putting them online would protect the world's cultural heritage; Google co-founder Sergey Brin stated, "The famous Library of Alexandria burned three times, in 48 BC, AD 273 and AD 640, as did the Library of Congress, where a fire in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of the collection. I hope such destruction never happens again, but history would suggest otherwise."[73] This characterization was rebuked by Pam Samuelson, UC Berkeley Professor of Law[74] saying "Libraries everywhere are terrified that Google will engage in price-gouging when setting prices for institutional subscriptions to GBS contents ... Brin forgot to mention another significant difference between GBS and traditional libraries: their policies on patron privacy. ... Google has been unwilling to make meaningful commitments to protect user privacy. Traditional libraries, by contrast, have been important guardians of patron privacy."[75] Others have denounced the settlement for neglecting to protect reader privacy.[76]
On March 22, 2011, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin issued a ruling on the amended settlement agreement, rejecting it. From the ruling: "While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA would simply go too far. It would permit this class action - - which was brought against defendant Google Inc. ("Google") 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. Accordingly, and for the reasons more fully discussed below, the motion for final approval of the ASA is denied." [77]
The Wall Street Journal commented on the practical impact of this ruling saying that: "Judge Chin's ruling changes little for Google users. About two million books that are in the public domain, such as works of William Shakespeare, currently can be viewed free on the Google Books site. [...] Google Books users currently can view long previews of another two million books that are in copyright and in print, thanks to agreements between Google and tens of thousands of publishers that were separate from the legal settlement. Millions more books that are in copyright but out of print are currently available in Google Books in a shorter 'snippet view.' Had the settlement been approved, users would have been able to see longer previews and potentially buy those books."[78]
Some European politicians and intellectuals have criticized Google's effort on "language-imperialism" grounds, arguing that because the vast majority of books proposed to be scanned are in English, it will result in disproportionate representation of natural languages in the digital world. German, Russian, and French, for instance, are popular languages in scholarship; the disproportionate online emphasis on English could shape access to historical scholarship, and, ultimately, the growth and direction of future scholarship. Among these critics is Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the former president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.[79]
While Google Books has digitized large numbers of journal back issues, its scans do not include the metadata required for identifying specific articles in specific issues. This has led the makers of Google Scholar to start their own program to digitize and host older journal articles (in agreement with their publishers).[80]
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