“When you are part of a company that is trying to digitize all the books in the world, the first question you often get is “Just how many books are out there?”” says Leonid Taycher, Google software engineer working on the Google Books project.

They counted 129,864,880 titles, or almost 130 million.

As you would expect, not everyone is buying Google’s count of all the world’s books, with Jon Stokes amongst others coming out with their own announcement, and that is the Google book count is bunkum.

So, a long time ago (at least it feels that way), having posted about Google’s desire to reproduce the world’s books, and the ensuing arguments that arose from it, I thought it was time to do an update on the books project to find out where were at and what had happened since we last discussed it.

So last time we talked about the Google books project, Amazon (who stood to have its book retailing market pulled from beneath it), Microsoft and various Governments (including the German and French) had weighed in on the opposing camp.

There was a fair bit of commentary, like this piece in Boing Boing and my own piece, How much power is too much power?

Now, I love Google, I really do, but the world is a big place and Google should allow others to compete. If it really does believe its own mantra (“Do No Evil”) then it needs to walk the talk. World domination is not really cool and ultimately serves the interests of only one crowd, that is the crowd that dominates.

Some academics argued the public good of making hard-to-find and out-of-print works available while the publishers (and their authors) that had agreed to the deal were sitting in the pro camp.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the Google Book Search settlement, take a quick read of this article in PC World. It’s a bit old now, but still offers up a good background.)

So what’s happened since (bearing in mind that the last time I wrote about this was as far back in Internet time as 9 September?

Basically having people complaining to the US Department of Justice is akin to having a fly in the ointment. It slows everything down, especially when the people complaining have BIG reputations in their own right. So the settlement arrangements underwent a court review (it was scheduled for October 7 in New York).

By November 2009, a revised settlement arrangement had been filed. The revised settlement narrowed the scope to the US, UK, Canada and Australia. It altered how revenue generated by “unclaimed works” were to be handled and gave retailers who license out-of-print books covered by the settlement — including Google competitors — a 37% share of sales. It also clarifies how the book pricing algorithm will work.

Even the revised settlement was rejected by many of the opponents to the book search settlement because it failed to address the fundamental problem, and that is that it gives Google the de facto exclusive license to commercialise all out-of-print books.

UC Berkeley law professor Pamela Samuelson, one of the leading voices and informed advocates for the public interest in the GBS debate, said last month that the deal is just not good for the social good.

“The GBS (Google Book Search) database is just that: a vast resource of additional data that Google can use to refine its search technologies and further entrench its market dominance in the search market. Yahoo! regards Google’s data advantage from GBS to be unfair because Google would be obtaining its de facto exclusive license to GBS books through a misuse of the class action procedure.”

Pamela of course is not the only one that has raised her voice in chorus to the arrangements.

This, “Google’s Shutterbug Stumble”, from April this year.

“Given that Google is trying to secure an exclusive license to millions of books through a complex legal process in order to further feed their advertising profits, it’s not surprising that their legal troubles continue to mount. This time it’s a lawsuit from the creative community of photographers and visual artists including: the American Society of Media Photographers, Graphic Artists Guild, the North American Nature Photography Association, the Professional Photographers of America, and individual photographers and illustrators. Of particular interest is whether Google’s commercialization of the digital copies of books they have scanned without rightsholder permission extends to the photos, illustrations, maps, and other visual images that appear in those books.”

And this, “It’s all about search stupid” also in April, from Devereux Chatillon in the Huffington Post:

“If the settlement is approved by the Court, Google will be the only search engine that will serve up search results that include the contents of some 5-10 million books — the books whose authors, publishers, copyright holders can’t be found or don’t want to be found. Because of the intersection of copyright and class action law woven together by the proposed settlement, no one else will be able to do that …. It means that Google’s ability to refine its algorithms for search results and its analysis of consumer behavior, interests, and needs will have a depth and a range that no one else can match.”.

And this:

“Google’s exclusive ability to map these books, and to observe how consumers interact with that map and the content that these books represent, would give Google a significant competitive advantage in the most profitable internet related market in which it is already dominant. Not surprisingly, the Department of Justice has announced that it is investigating.”

THE VERIZON DEAL.

Not helping its cause (or making its opponents feel any more relaxed about the scheme) is the proposed deal between Google and Verizon Wireless to effectively divide the Internet into two – the public offer and the premium offer.

This is why, say some, it’s so hard to trust Google.

“Google and Verizon deny they have any “deal” in place. But their “policy proposal,” if adopted by the U.S. government, would effectively allow broadband and network providers, like Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon, to create “premium” services for web content. That’s troubling on many levels, experts say. “Google, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare are just a few of the thousands of companies that flourished on the Internet, precisely because there were no gatekeepers and no toll takers,” observes venture capitalist Brad Burnham in his Times contribution.”

Or take a look at this piece Controlling Commerce and Speech on the issue of net neutrality in the NY Times.

“Just consider the power and public role of firms like Verizon or Google (especially if they work together). Sitting atop the web, they can influence what firms succeed or fail — by making sites load faster or slower, or end up on page 10 of search results. It goes further — in subtle ways, the information carriers have the power to influence elections and even censor speech they don’t like.

I’m not saying these firms are planning to use their power for evil, but that they have the power; we must demand it is exercised carefully. Whether it’s Web 3.0 or 8.0 doesn’t matter. Technology can be cool, but regardless, controlling information is an enormous source of power that can be abused, whether we’re talking radio in the 1930s, or the Internet in the 2010s. The public should demand basic non-discrimination — otherwise known as Net Neutrality — from the information powers.”

Pretty much the point I made in my post last year about the extent of Google’s power. Where will this end? Back at the US Department of Justice if I was a betting person.

And in the meantime, Google continues to hoover the world’s books into its collection.

P.S. If you want to stay informed about the Google Book Settlement, head to either the opposing camp Open Book Alliance or the pro camp Google’s own book search blog.

NEED A LAUGH? Check out Jon Stewart on Google’s Net Neutrality.

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