Google Books Becomes a Kinder, Gentler Thing
September 8, 2009
I enjoyed the Bloomberg story “Google Agrees to Give Europeans a Say in Books Deal.” I thought Google was reluctant to compromise, to show softness instead of knife edged logic. Maybe 1 + 1 does equal three in this brave new world. The story said:
“The challenge for EU policymakers is to ensure a regulatory framework which paves the way for a rapid roll-out of services, similar to those made possible in the U.S. by the recent settlement, to European consumers and to the European library and research communities,” the commissioners said in a joint statement today.
I found this comment because I can see that it may suggest that Google is adding some friendly souls to the Google Books board.
But Google is going even farther. According to the Reuters story “Google Tells EU Online Books Make Web Democratic” that Google is doing good. The statement attributed to Dan Clancy, architect of the Google Books program, was interesting:
“We have seen a democratization of access to online information,” said Clancy, engineering director of Google Book Search. “You can discover information which you did not know was there,” he said. “It is important that these (out-of-print) books are not left behind. Google’s interest was in helping people to find the books.”
Isn’t that a royal “we”?
Stephen Arnold, September 7, 2009
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