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The Debate Around Google Print

October 18, 2005

I was just reading a post on John Battelle's Blog about the debate between Google and the Author's Guild concerning the new Google Print website. Google is arguing that posting book text is fair use, while the Author's guild is of the position that Google is violating copyright law.

In his post, Battelle quotes Eric Schmidt's Op Ed piece in the WSJ where Schmidt poses the question:

"How many users will find, and then buy, books they never could have discovered any other way? How many out-of-print and backlist titles will find new and renewed sales life?"

Let's see if the Hitwise tool can shed some light on these questions:

google print.gif

The table above is a list of all Shopping & Classifieds sites that received traffic from Google Print for the week ending 10/15/05. Interesting that among the downstream sites are Amazon at 2.0%, eBay with 1.8%, Barnes and Noble with 1.0% and Alibris with .21%. Perhaps Schmidt is right, Google Print may be facilitating book sales.

Posted by Bill Tancer at 02:05 PM | (2) | (0)

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Comments

Great blog. It appears now Google is being sued by the Association of American Publishers for its Google Print Library Project as well. Seems vaguely reminscent of another battle waged between artists/publishers and distributors. Is "ibooks" in our future?

Posted by Jayne | October 20, 2005 02:47 PM

Enjoyed your talk yesterday. We need to find the UK equivalent of "prom dresses". Is there a "fireworks" angle here (or have we missed it?"

Posted by roger willcocks | October 27, 2005 03:05 AM

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