Google finally settles lawsuit brought over book scanning efforts

Brian White — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:35:00 EST

Filed under: Good news, Products and Services, Google (GOOG)

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) can finally put a goofy litigious chapter behind it. It can now get back to the business of scanning books in its effort to make anything ever printed available digitally. Google's book scanning project is intended for one thing, and one thing only: profit-generation while enabling readers to have access to any book from almost any web browser anywhere on earth.

Google will settle two copyright lawsuits for $125 million and then will continue to scan in books and make them available for purchase electronically. Book publishers and authors will, of course, receive advertising revenue and other revenue as a result of Google's efforts. Google will, of course, get a cut of the action as well. I'm not sure of the scale here, but if Google reached just a small portion of readers across the globe and eeked out a buck or two from each one, there's some massive revenue generation for you. Nice business if you can get it.

In addition, Google certainly hopes to convert authors still demanding the physical printing of authored works to the digital side, where even more revenue can be generated. The generation who reads newspapers, carry books with them and does calculations by hand is being replaced by the generation who has everything online from anywhere they go and run a completely digital life. The distribution method is the internet for these folks, and the content must be there as well. There's something nostalgic about taking a nice book with you to read in a quiet place (that is, if you can find a quiet place). But, for those multitasking Gen-Yers, information flows only digitally -- and Google wants to make sure you find what you need through it.

Google finally settles lawsuit brought over book scanning efforts originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google after the bell for 8-9-06: Book scanning project gets friend in U. of California

Brian White — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:43:00 EST

Filed under: After the Bell, Good news, Products and Services, Industry, Consumer Experience, Internet, Competitive Strategy, Google (GOOG)

Google shares closed down today to end the Wednesday trading session at $376.94, a drop of $4.06 or 1.07% from Tuesday's close. As Google finally laid out the methodology -- as publicly as it could -- regarding how it measures and faces click fraud, hopefully some larger-tier (and smaller-tier) ad customers on the Google network are taking a small chance to have a sigh of relief today.

In an expected but still bold move, Google also announced today that it would be digitizing all the books between the combined libraries of the 10 University of California campuses. This is no small order, as there are no less than 100 libraries between all the campuses. I'd love to see the automated scanner process that does all this!

As always it seems, Google CEO Eric Schmidt also said today that the markets for search and related contextual advertising are "doing well" -- which is probably an understatement in a company where that seems to be the norm. Being modest is not a losing proposition ever -- it's an ingenious cloak that throws competitors off the track should they be close, well, to any strategy that may compete with Google.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.

Google after the bell for 8-9-06: Book scanning project gets friend in U. of California originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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