Pandia argues that Google’s deal with US publishers and authors may lead to a new revolution in book dissemination — one that can be compared to the importance of the printing press.

This week the Official Google Blog announced that Google has made a deal with US publishers regarding the Google Book Search service.

Google Book Search lets you search the contents of a large number of books that have been scanned by Google. Google Book Search will list books that contain your search query and display relevant paragraphs from these books. If the copyright owner allows it or the book is in the public domain, Google may also display more content from the book.

So far Google has scanned some 7 billion books from all over the world. 1 million are in full preview mode as part of formal publisher agreements and 1 million are in the public domain.

A deal with US publishers

The deal between The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google covers the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search.

If approved by court, the agreement would provide:

• More content from out-of-print books, enabling US readers to search and preview them online.
• Introducing new ways of purchasing and downloading copyrighted books.
• U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations may obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the libraries.
• Free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries.
• Compensation to authors and publishers and control over access to their works through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry.

Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling US$125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees.

What does it mean?

Keep in mind that Google has a very ambitious goal for its search service: The company wants to index all available content it the world, and they mean this literally.

Sometime in the future you should be able to go to Google and search the content of all books, magazines, newspapers, periodicals that have been published.

That goal is, of course, unattainable, as there will always be some obscure publications tucked away in some remote book collection, out of reach of Google’s scanners.

However, this deal proves that Google may come very close to its objective.

This deal will lead to similar deals with publishers, libraries and authors in other countries, giving its book search database wide coverage of current and historical literature.

The three steps in the evolution of book search

In many ways this may represent the third revolutionary step for book dissemination.

The first step was reached in antiquity. In the Library of Alexandria it was possible to track down the works of the most important philosophers, poets and scholars. In Europe in the Middle Ages the monasteries stored essential books for theologians and scholars.

However, these books were hand written copies and there where very few of them available. This was a resource for the wealthy or the people inside the religious or political elites.

The second step was reached with the printing press (Gutenberg 1436), which made it possible to print a large number of copies of each book.

The distribution of books remained mainly in the hands of the wealthy (and — of course — those that could read), but throughout the next couple of centuries books and pamphlets became more widely available to wider sections of society.

Modern democracy is one of the results of this process. Information is no longer exclusively in the hands of the people in power.

It is still not easy to get hold of all books

Still, identifying, finding and getting access to out-of-print books continues to be a hassle, even in countries with well developed library systems.

Researchers have to rely on bibliographies and footnotes in scholarly papers to make a survey of must-read books. Library databases may help you along the way, but they do not allow you to search the content of the books.

If the book is out-of-print the researcher will have to order the books from the library. If the local library does not have a copy, it will have to be ordered from another collection, which takes time. Moreover you will have to return the book after a certain period of time.

The system certainly works, but it is cumbersome and use of the system is for all practical purposes limited to librarians, professional researchers, journalists and intelligence experts.

Step Three: From Gutenberg to Google

The World Wide Web and sites like Google and Wikipedia have already given us access to enormous amounts of information. No longer do we have to wait weeks or months to read it.

However, most of the printed material is unavailable online.

This is the goal of Google: To make printed material as easily available as web pages and online PDF files. That will indeed represent a third revolutionary step for literature dissemination. Anyone, anywhere, can immediately find and read the content of books relevant to their interests.

They will obviously have to pay to get full access to copyrighted texts, including out-of-print material, but public domain books will be available for free.

We believe it is hard to overestimate the impact this third step can have on research and the public debate.

Remember that this technology is made available in parallel with two other important global trends:

• The educational levels in the more wealthy part of the world is increasing significantly. In many “first world” countries half of the population takes part in some form of tertiary education. This means that they at least have some of the skills required to make use of this literature.
• More and more developing countries are getting their own middle class, highly educated and with the financial resources needed to become “Internet citizens”. There are several hundred millions of them i China and India alone.

The world may be reaching a new kind of critical mass both as regards access to information and the skills needed to make use of it. This development may have major consequences for economic, social and cultural development, and Google has decided to play one of the main parts in that development.

An information monopoly?

This has led to concern in some quarters: Isn’t it dangerous to let one big American company control all this information? Isn’t this concentration of power a danger to democracy?

Actually, we do find it a bit disturbing that Microsoft has abandoned its own book scanning project. This decision is another example the current lack of vision in parts of the Microsoft management system.

Alternatives are good for innovation. Moreover, they may stop one company from becoming too dominant in a certain field, and in this case we are talking of a service that may finally be considered a “public good”, in the same way as roads, mobile phone coverage or Internet access are public goods today.

If Google gets a dysfunctional leadership or get caught in some future economic tsunami, it would be great to have alternative options available.

However, that should not lead us to uncritical Google bashing.

The realistic alternative to Google Books is having no online book search at all, limiting this kind of universal book access to the current elite: scholars, scientists, librarians and other types of information experts.

That is also a kind of monopoly, although admittedly it is one divided between different people with different power bases, ideologies and mentalities.

Moreover, the “old” system with the distribution of copies of physical paper based books will probably remain in place for the foreseeable future.

As people get used to the ease of use of Google’s Book Search, however, the number people capable of using the old system will dwindle.

The fact that Google also will be a portal for the sales of PDF versions of the books, will hasten the movement away form the distribution of physical books to the dissemination of ebooks. We are now getting more reader friendly ebook readers (like the Kindle) that makes ebook reading a real alternative. Google Books will become an important portal for the sales of such books.

This is why Google watchers should make sure Google keeps its promise and does its best to make its database as all encompassing as possible.

If this service becomes profitable, Google competitors may develop alternative book search tools.

The agreement between Google and the US publishers and authors is non-exclusive, meaning that other companies may make similar deal with libraries and the like.

They will not get access to the scanned files, though, and would probably have to scan the books all over again. That is not a trivial matter. Nor is it easy to build up the computer power needed to run such a service.

Are there possible competitors available? Microsoft may change their mind and reestablish their scanning program, though we doubt it. If Yahoo! gets its house in order, they may possible see the benefit of such a program, but that is unlikely in the short term.

The safest bet is Amazon, a company that already is presenting the content of some of the books it is selling online. Amazon know that it needs more content for its Kindle ebook reader, and it would make perfect sense for the company to sell out-of-print but copyright-protected books through its online store.

A tip

Here’s a tip: If you want to search for PDF-files containing out-of-copyright books, go to the advanced search form and by click on the “Full view only” radio button before entering your search terms. Once you select a book from your results, you’ll see a “Download” button on the right side of the page. The result pages also have a pull-down menu that lets you select this option.

See also:
Google pays small change to open every book in the world (Guardian)