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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."

6 of 245 comments (clear)

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

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

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  2. 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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  3. 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.

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

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. 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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