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Google Launches Google Print

Posted by samzenpus on from the even-more-searching dept.

Rescate writes "As reported by Reuters,Google is launching Google Print, which will show book excerpts next to regular Google search results. A spokesman said, "We're trying to index every book there is, and make it searchable for our users." Even though this competes with Amazon's A9 search which also searches within books, Google says the two companies will continue to work together, and that Google Print will link to Amazon, as well as other sellers, to buy books listed in the search results. Google will demonstrate the technology Thursday, Oct. 7 at the Frankfurt Book Fair."

13 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Musty Libraries a Thing of the Past? by mfh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google will demonstrate the technology Thursday, Oct. 7 at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
    Now there is a clever piece of irony. Google is pioneering toward a paperless library and they show it off at a book fair. Authors will surely love this technology while publishers might not like it if it makes them redundant. How many of you remember the musty smell of an old library filled with books? Today's libraries have improved, yet tomorrow's libraries may have no books at all, only a small cube in the middle of it that wifis texts to people from their homes. It's only a matter of time before we don't need to scan thousands of pages to write papers (or even learn something for that matter), and it will make everyone much more productive and intelligent. Publishers have pretty much accepted electronic book formats, so what's wrong with the RIAA and the MPAA?

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    1. Re:Musty Libraries a Thing of the Past? by Psychotext · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No No NO! Some of us actually like musty old libraries. I dont know why but I have always felt a aura of knowledge when I walk into a good library and despite being a tech-head in every sense of the word I would be the last one standing to ensure they keep books in paper format - AND AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.

      I dont know... I just sit in front of these damn screens for so many hours. Nothing seems to go in anymore. I read document after document, online papers, articles, blogs. None of it seems to have the same weight as a decent book that I can read without distraction, whether that is in the corner of my house or a library quiet room. Maybe it's because half of the content out there is rubbish (Publishers actually do something you know!) or maybe it's just the format, but I really don't like electronic books.

      I'll live without it thank you, and I'll thank you to stay away from my musty books. This isn't progress!

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  2. Launched? by richcoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I always thought that launched meant that the site was up and running? All I see is a FAQ page.

  3. Gutenberg by Ryan+Stortz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Will Google by any chance be using any of Project Gutenberg's texts?

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  4. Copyright Concerns? by ravenspear · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What kind of copyright concerns among publishers will this cause? I know Amazon received some opposition to their service and it seems that this is a step up from that. At least on Amazon the content was only available on one site and most people would probably come across it when looking to buy the book or ones similar to it. But with this, you could have copyrighted content suddenly becoming accessible on millions of searches from anywhere.

    1. Re:Copyright Concerns? by moonbender · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Judging by the FAQ, publishers send books to Google to get them scanned and indexed. I assume that when they send their books, they also agree to give Google a license to use the materials in the way described.

      That said, I'm still curious how this will work out. There are many issues. For one, it will have to gain a critical mass of books to be more than a novelty. And if it really works as described above, they rely on others to bring books to them. With anyone else, I'd be very sceptical, but Google does have the sheer brand power to actually get publishers to send in books. On the other hand, maybe sent in books are just part of it and they also index books out of their own volition, which as you said brings up copyright concerns.
      If that works out, I'm curious to see how they will enforce the viewing limitations. It says that you'll be able to view the two pages before and after the one you found. It also says it records data to track which books you've already seen, assumingly to prevent you from seeing more than those 5 or another number of pages of any book, ever. It does not say whether or not you're required to log in an account, but that would seem to be the only way to prevent people from simply refusing a cookie or clearing them to see another 5 pages. Of course, Google is using accounts for most of it's add-on services, at least as an option, but I think it'd be a first for an account required to gain access to a certain search engine feature.
      And of course even with accounts, they wouldn't be very safe at all from malignent users, who could run multiple accounts, or groups of users who pool their pages to get the whole thing. Granted, it would take many users and more importantly a lot of time to get a 300 page novel, but groups working together to violate copyrights using an enormous amount of technical know-how are hardly new to the Internet. It's probably simpler to just scan and OCR the whole thing yourself, though.

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  5. camel by mrpuffypants · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i want the entire oreilly catalog on there right now.

    I know it's already all in digital format, it's just a matter of emailing it to google.

    go, tim, go.

  6. Google really does know its business by ShatteredDream · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Other tech and IP companies could really stand to learn from Google. They took what was originally a niche market and they have built it up and brought that market into new areas. One of the best things that Google did was make their search features customizable for individual websites. They aren't the first to do this, but they have been very good at making it fit in well with the websites that want to add search capabilities.

    Now what would be really sweet would be for Google to convince the music and movie industries to let it index song lyrics and movie scripts. That would be just another nail in the coffin for Google's competitors and it probably wouldn't be that difficult to do.

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  7. A Plagiarist's Dilemma by lavar78 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On one hand, this is going to make it much easier for plagiarists. OTOH, it's going to make it much easier to catch them.

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  8. The publishers are adamantly against this by j.+andrew+rogers · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the standpoint of the publishers (and my girlfriend is a national sales manager for one of the very large publishers), this idea is incredibly bad and they have been extremely resistant to it. Amazon has been trying to push this for years without success, and it seems that now Google is getting in on the game. Or maybe Amazon is trying to use Google as additional weight to try and break the stubbornness of the publishers.

    The problem, ultimately, is that showing the page you are looking for, plus or minus two pages, is often all the pages you need to see for a great many bookes e.g. books that are randomly accessed in a reference fashion. As an example of this, my girlfriend routinely searches cookbooks online using this very feature. It shows her the recipe she was looking for from an expensive cookbook, and plus or minus a couple pages, which means she gets the entire recipes -- the primary benefit of the book -- online for free. And she uses this as an example of why her publishing houses won't participate.

    For STM publishers and similar, 90% of their product line could be used this way. Letting Amazon (or Google) give away book content in a searchable format five pages at a time would dramatically eat into their sales without generating any revenue. Most of the books you do see in this system are either 1) books from minor publishers too stupid to have thought this through, or 2) a very short list of throwaway books from major publishers to prove to Amazon and themselves that it actually eats sales rather than driving them -- the consensus of the publishing industry. It would have died a long time ago except that it is the pet project of someone high up in Amazon.

    1. Re:The publishers are adamantly against this by sparkmanC · · Score: 5, Interesting

      prove to Amazon and themselves that it actually eats sales rather than driving them

      Actually, having books online for browsing increases sales. Just think about going to the book store and paging through a book before you buy it... You are much less likely to buy a book that is shrink-wrapped, because you have no idea of the quality of the book.

  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. Re:See also... by generic-man · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google Sets came up with a list of common shampoo ingredients (?) after I seeded it with the four active ingredients in Pert Plus.

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