Google Books Case. by Milota Sidorova

More than two months have passed since the Google Books affair broke out. The contract between the largest internet search engine, producers (the Association of American Publishers) and authors (The Authors Guild) is having serious consequences, for instance eliminating electronic book sellers such Amazon, Yahoo or Microsoft. Google started to offer selected scanned chapters or entire sequences of American books via internet browsing. For me as a customer, it was a good marketing performance and I was able to get through many unavailable books for my thesis. The customers suddenly got an access to millions of scanned manuscripts. The authors and publishers got a cut of th! e revenue generated by Google. But there is a different option in the business environment. Google Books settlement is now having an anti-alliance teamed by mentioned rivals (Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon...). The affair reached the U.S. Justice Department with the result of balking Google’s original agreement. However, the cause is still on the table of federal court. Here comes the controversy. The original company‘s offer has been extended with a series of new provisions – for example more flexibility to set the prices, discounts and easier selling rights to the products – electronic books. If the court approves the revised proposal, Google will have to ease the control over the business. The current position is making the company the biggest player on the market and the object of an anti-trust department. Some countries such as Germany or France have already raised objections against Google because free online proving is violating copyright laws ther! e. What seemed to be a smart business step turned into a real! mess wi th long and serious consequences. Yet, we don’t know the court result – the final hearing is scheduled on February 18th.

related story (sgx15911): http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091114/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_go...

by Milota Sidorova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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