It was one of the most ambitious of Google. But since Tuesday night, the giant project of the Internet to scan then upload all books published worldwide has suffered a serious setback. A U.S. federal court has decided that this great work "googlesque" was "way too far" and allowed the giant Mountain View (California) to crush the market for online publishing.
More concretely, the American judge Denny Chin ruled, at the request of the Department of Justice on the legality of a 2008 agreement between Google and the two main associations of the U.S. edition: Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.He found that too much to compromise the benefit of Google and found that virtually gave him the right to post any book without permission of the author.
The agreement in question provided for the creation of a fund, fed by Google, to compensate authors. The Internet giant had thus committed $ 125 million. In return, the multinational could quietly continue to scan all books published in English in the world. Authors who did not want to be included in this virtual library were, themselves, notify Google. This posed a problem for books "orphans" - those we can not find the copyright holders.This system has not pleased the judge Denny Chin, who argued that the search had to ask permission to scan books.
"Not only the literature"
The ruling was eagerly awaited. "We are disappointed by the decision because we believe it is important to bring to the world millions of otherwise hard to find books," he lamented in a statement Tuesday night Hilary Sware, spokesman for Google. But the real issue lies elsewhere: it is rather a story of "big money".
It is no coincidence that, in addition to the U.S. Department of Justice, the prosecution received the support of the Open Book Alliance.Which includes the major competitors of Google - starting with Microsoft and Yahoo's agreement, subject to the judge "allowed Google to interfere a little more privacy and awarded him a monopoly in the internet search" said Gary Reback Tuesday night, co-founder of the Open Book Alliance.
For Google, the works are, in fact, not only in literature. Since 1998, Larry Page, co-founder (with Sergey Brin) Google's dream of a virtual digital library that would work hand in hand with its search engine. Since its IPO in 2004, the group began to scan books. It is now more than 15 billion digital works.
Not dead yet
These pages can be very lucrative.Indeed, if users can use Google to search the contents of a book, the search engine benefit to retrieve information about their reading habits - which would sell more personalized advertisements.
Microsoft, which tries to impose its search engine against Google Bing, did not want to see his enemy to raid the market. Others, like Amazon, do not want a new competitor to sell books online. In December 2010, Google has, in fact, the U.S. launched a virtual library.
But the Google project is not dead, however. Judge Denny Chin has hinted that he might reconsider his decision if the agreement was renegotiated.If Google is trying so hard since 2004 to achieve its ends, it is likely he will return to discuss with publishers and authors.
