Google has taken a few search engine rivals such as Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo by storm in their latest attempt to commercialize internet information and search. I find that these three industry competitors will be the major players to fight for this market. Initially, The Google Print Library Project began this venture in an agreement with a few universities and libraries to digitize books by indexing snippets of the material on the World Wide Web. This brought on legal action taken by authors and publishers alleging copyright infringement. Although Google Inc. had already digitized over seven million books, this turmoil caused their project to cease operation.
Not only has this settlement enraged those popular search engine industries but it has also ruffled feathers for major libraries and literary organizations to the point of a new formation called Open Book Alliance. Aside of Google Inc.’s rivals, in the alliance are the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, the New York Library Association, the Small Press Distribution literary arts organization and the Special Libraries Association. I think it would be fair to say that the proposal of this alliance is to amend the settlement so it creates a fair avenue for a more competitive market for books and literature whether old or new.
Currently on this case, the Department of Justice has released a statement regarding the proposed settlement on the grounds of antitrust. Their response to the Google Book Search settlement was that it should not be approved without making some changes because it violates class action and copyright and antitrust laws. In essence, they requested all parties review the provisions for future licensing, resolve possible conflicts among class members, create more protection for unknown copyright holders, incorporate the concerns of foreign authors and publishers, completely disregard the agreement of joint-pricing mechanisms among publishers and authors, and allow book-scanning competitors, like Amazon, to access the books for resale. A New York District Judge Denny Chin shall decide on all of these elements in a proposed settlement hearing soon to be announced.
One cannot ignore the enormous amount of success of the Google Inc. industry. I feel the creation of Google Earth was breathtaking. Now they have launched Google Sidewiki, a browser sidebar which allows you to contribute information next to any webpage. Their technology ideas are growing at a rate that is difficult for others to compete with. Corporate ethics, governance, and citizenship must begin to play a much larger role here. There must be a way to somehow control the open cyberspace world but because of freedom of speech, this task is very difficult to accomplish. I believe capitalism is at odds with information creation and privacy but I have yet to see any major laws preventing the use of the open internet.
I feel Google will win and take over not only the search engine industry but all forms the computer science world.
