Google in Knowledge Grab
March 30, 2009
Google keeps getting on the wrong side of the UK newspapers. The Times of London’s “Google Makes a Grab for E-Books” here gives the company some of that put down jabber for which Oxford-style debaters are noted. (I debated a team from Oxford when in university. My partner and I won, but we had some mud sticking to our suits.) The Times said:
This move [Google’s deal with Sony] is merely the tip of an iceberg. Late last year Google settled a class-action lawsuit with the two most powerful authors’ and publishers’ associations in America. In exchange for a $125m (£86m) payment, the groups agreed that Google would set up and administer a publishing-rights register designed to match up new and existing electronic books to their copyright owners, and manage payments for anyone who wanted to download them. Unlike ePub, this would be a closed — and profit-generating — system owned and managed by Google. The system would effectively make Google the sole distributor — and seller — of many electronic books.
Googzilla needs to get its public relations program on track in the UK. The traditional book publishing industry may be in a death spiral, but it has the incentive to make life miserable for the laddies and lassies in Google offices.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
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