 |  |  |  |  |
Monday Report
below!
worryin' that google is out ta get me!
...they're everywhere, you see...
This week's report by Leopold McGinnis, ULA
Google Books - your friendly neighborhood book store.
No, really! (Part One of a Two Part Series)
The Titan Arises
For those of you completely in the dark, Google is the Internet’s foremost search
engine. Of all the Information Superhighway corporations to emerge hissing, burning
and unholy from the fertile ground of the dot.com boom, Google trumps the rest,
rising like a titan, feeding off of positive stock speculation and the information eras
desperate need for the ultimate librarian. Through the use of its top-secret search-
technology, Google has surpassed all other search-engines in the quest for the
unthinkable – sorting the Internet.
Like most dot.coms, Google entered the business to make money. It didn’t invent the
internet search, it wasn’t even one of the pioneers, but it now owns it.
This summer Google went public with the astronomical stock price of $135 per share.
Its ads program has been an interstellar profit generating success, and with the release
of its desktop search tool, Google Maps – an awe-inspiring brute force satellite
generated documentation of the entire earth ala Dr. No - it was only inevitable that
Google, with its penchant for dominating industries via the use of its top-secret
categorizing algorithms, has set its sights on one of the other major success stories of
the Internet – Amazon and the juicy realm of literature. Yes, the golden boy
overachieving company of the new millennium, the apple of Wall Street’s eye is
double-clicking on books. In fact, they’ve stamped their name right next to it…and
they’ve put their name first: Google Books.
What is Google Books?
There are two aspects of Google’s war plan. The Library Project and the ‘Partner’
Program (sarcastic quotes, mine). Both these projects, in essence, revolve around
Google scanning everything ever printed and making it available for search by the
general public.
There’s been a lot of stink in the literature realm – particularly amongst the 9
conglomerate enterprises that publish, well, everything – about Google’s latest venture
to own, well, everything. Tempers flare, particularly, around the fact that Google
plans to treat copyrighted books in the same manner it has treated websites – as
cherries for the plucking. I.e., collecting them, without the permission of the author,
en force and allowing them to be searched while making profits through the process.
Mostly the lit industries are concerned about their bottom line – and they should be
because Google isn’t doing this for the good of mankind, for literacy or for the
children. Certainly, in an age of vast overproduction, a means to sort things,
particularly information, is greatly needed. That’s all very nice and good, but Google’
s got stockholders to report to. Relying on its strengths – inserting itself into and then
dominating industries started by other companies – Google is aiming its flying wedge
at the lucrative (for everyone except authors) field of book publishing.
Most of this controversy, if the report by an independent expert (so Google claims) on
the Google ‘blog’ is to be believed (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-
print-and-authors-guild.html), surrounds the Library Project – where Google has
already begun scanning and incorporating library archives into its museum of
everything. Google claims that most of their scans will be of public domain materials
but, hey, if some copyright materials get caught in the grinder accidentally, that’s just
the cost of business. You gotta break some eggs to make an omelet – nevermind that
they’re someone else’s eggs and someone else paid for the frying pan. But the Library
project, for all its faults and positives, is the subject of another essay. We’ll be
focusing here on the Partner Program aspect of Google books and what it means to
underground authors.
What is the Partner Program and How does it work?
To quoteth Google: “Think of Google Book Search as a free worldwide sales and
marketing system. By matching your words with user searches, Google Book Search
connects your books with the users who are most interested in buying them – and then
links them to places where they can buy them immediately.” This is, of course, how
Google Promotion wants you to think of the program – how they think about it in
accounting is much different, I can guarantee you. Of course, the description above is,
seemingly, a fairly accurate description of the services Google intends to offer. (The
description above refers to the Partner Program - not the library project - though
Google encompasses it all under the Google Book Search term and then claims it’s
the publishers who are confusing them as the same system.) Under the partner
program, it is up to publishers and rights-holders to submit their books to Google –
either in pdf, or actual book form. Google will then scan the entirety of your book to
be put online for searching.
According to Google, the search term will only display the text that the user has
searched for, plus a sentence or two before and after. Rights holders have the option
of deciding how much ‘surfers’ can see of the book, from a few paragraphs to a few
pages, or the whole book. Google claims that a direct link will then be made from the
search result page directly to the publisher’s site. Google only accepts books with
ISBNs. Third party links aren’t allowed (ie, you couldn’t have your book link to a
bookstore or Amazon. Google’s trying to take their place in the chain). Google does
not accept “journals, magazines, calendars, or digital files such as PDF files” and,
currently, only books in English. “Publishers or entities otherwise associated with the
title may not provide incentives of any kind for users to click on the Google
advertisements displayed on the content of that title.”
The books are hosted on “our secure servers” (which are surreptitiously being placed
around the planet to create an ‘alternate’, Google-owned Internet – http://www.pbs.
org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051117.html) “and users can only see a limited number of
pages from your books. In addition, copy, save and print functions are disabled.” You
can remove any of your books from Google Book Search at any time although, as we
all know, Google “may change our policies at any time, and pursuant to our Terms
and Conditions it is your responsibility to keep up-to-date with and adhere to the
policies posted here.” Hey, that’s just the cost of making omelettes!
Why should we care?
So the corporate gods are feuding again, why should we care? Despite the fact that
Mount Olympus has seemingly little concern for welfare on the crust of this slippery
planet – in fact, exists only because we BELIEVE in them – when the Gods are
feuding, opportunities are made. In this case, the favours are being curried from
authors. Authors, who spend their lives hoping someone else will want to listen to
them (and, in fact, spending most of it being ignored) couldn’t be more delighted. The
difference is that, this time, unlike anyone else, Google is including the underground.
Google Books presents never-before offered opportunities to unpopular,
underground, independent and self-published authors.
Clearly, the ability to promote our work on par with the privileged publishers (at least
for a little while) is strong with Google books. Additionally, Google books promises
to greatly affect the traditional route of people finding books, taking power from the
bookstores and giving it to…Google. There is little doubt that Google Books will put
chinks in the chain of the Master Publisher and Indentured Servant Publisher model
of book publishing. How long those chinks will remain once Google achieves its goal
remains to be seen. As everyone knows, the Gods will be vengeful sooner or later, so
the question comes down to ‘Do we support the Gods at all? And, if so, which side
should we bet on?’
~ This Two-Part ULA Monday Report Will Be Concluded
Next Week...so, uh, Google it up then! ~
Resources & References:
The main page for Google Books: http://print.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/publisher.html
To read google’s perspective on the library project, check:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html
Information about Google’s Initial Public Offering: http://www.ipogoogle.org/
Google’s policies for Google Books: https://print.google.com/publisher/policies
…………………………………………………………………….………………….…….
Leopold McGinnis is a Canadian author. His novel, Game Quest, about the
hostile takeover of a computer game company just before the meteoric rise of
the Internet, will be published this Spring and is currently being serialized
online at www.gamequestnovel.com.
……………………………………………………………………………………….…….
GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
