This week Microsoft, Yahoo! and Amazon decided to join the forces trying to stop Google’s book scanning program.

Google (NSDQ:GOOG) has made deals with publishers and libraries in order to be allowed to scan all the books in the world. It may sound like a mad man talking, but Google’s plan is actually to index the texts of all the printed material in the world and make it searchable on the net.

The idea is not to provide all this content for free, but to let people search the content, get relevant text snippets from selected pages of the book and than choose to download a digital copy or buy a physical copy for a fee.

Books in the public domain will be made available by Google for free. Many of them are already.

The usefulness of universal book search

Having worked in research for years, Google’s plan sounds like music our ears. Google Books and Google Scholar have already become useful tools for tracking down research papers and scientific books. Google is making the work of finding and fetching relevant material so much easier, generating new ways of coupling research and researchers that would not have met otherwise.

If you cannot compete, stop them in court

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) and Yahoo! (NSDQ:YHOO), however, do not share this vision. Microsoft had its own book scanning program, but closed it down. The company’s economists and marketing people clearly found that a pay for search program was what the world needed, not easy access to books.

So instead of making an alternative to Google, the new partners are trying to stop Google from succeeding. The trick is to stop Google from earning money on the project.

“Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo are planning to join a coalition of nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations to oppose a proposed class-action settlement giving Google the rights to commercialize digital copies of millions of books,” the New York Times reports.

The new ebook market

In simple terms: Google wants to be able to sell books for downloading on their own site. If you search using Google and find an indexed book, they want you to be able to download it right away, paying Google for the pleasure. Google will then reimburse publishers and authors, in accordance with the October settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

This means that Google becomes an ebook reseller like Amazon and others, the main competitive advantage being that Google will own the most popular search engine for finding books in the world.

Ebooks will give us the next digital revolution and change the publishing industry in much the same way as MP3 files and iTunes changed the music industry.

Microsoft and its new partner Yahoo! know this. They also know that search is the a key access point to the new market. They are worried, as Google is far ahead of them when it comes to providing a useful service in this area.

Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN) , which is building its own online ebook search sales apparatus through amazon.com and the Kindle ebook reader, would like to stop Google from becoming a ebook competitor.

Stop complaining, start innovating!

The deal will give Google a big part of the ebook market, for sure, but it will also give us all an extremely useful tool that will stimulate the dissemination of ideas and knowledge and generate innovation, cultural exchange and democratic discussions. We need more such tools, not less.

Microsoft should stop complaining and start working on an alternative to Google. A monopolistic company like Microsoft is not credible when it argues that it would like to stop Google out of concern for competition.

Amazon is already well established in the ebook segment, and has a large number of books available for text search and downloading. They ought to be able to compete with Google without dragging Google to court.

The Google book settlement

See also the Register: Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo! to join anti-Googlebook war
ZD Net: Can Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon help scuttle Google’s book settlement?

photo credit: gualtiero