Google and Publishers
October 12, 2008
Book2Book (BookTrade.info) reported on October 9, 2008, that Google may be smoking the peace pipe with traditional publishers, well, some traditional publishers. You can read “Settlement in Google Lawsuit Appears Near” here. This is a short news item, and I don’t want to quote anything from the story so I can avoid being pinged for ripping off another person’s content. Google has been scanning books for several years. Publishers don’t like that idea for many reasons. The law suit was an attempt by the copyright holders to keep the GOOG at bay. Now, if the Book2Book news item is on target, Google and the publishers may have an deal soon. Read the story; decide for yourself.
Here’s my take:
- Google is saying that it is not a publisher. Anyone with knowledge or Knol can figure out that Google intakes original content and outputs it. That sure seems like publishing to me.
- A deal with Google does little to stop Google from becoming the Internet and online. Publishers can’t stop this, and the legal tactics over the last couple of years to stop Google have had zero impact. Any financial deal with Google is going to be too little to late. The publishers’ children, just like my neighbors’ children, use Google. Google has, for a certain demographic, won and will keep winning.
- Publishers have been unable to adjust their business model. It is no longer an issue of technology; publishers are working in a frame. Google is outside the frame. If a deal emerges, I can visualize sitting in the audience at a publisher conference hearing speakers explain how the deal with protect the publishers’ franchise. This is what I call the imaginary number problem. If you don’t know about the square root of minus one, then it’s tough to understand the solution to certain problems.
What is your view of Google’s relationship with publishers? What am I missing?
Stephen Arnold, October 12, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
