The Google Blog

I decided to follow the official Google blog, which posts about various topics related to searching, data organization, information architecture, or anything new from Google. Most of the posts seem to be about some new feature on a Google interface, or some small detail that was changed here or there. There were a few more interesting ones this week, however.

One in particular was called "A Tale of 10,000,000 Books," which was about Google books, the growing database of book that Google has been amassing. I thought this posting was relevant to several of the discussions we have had. Google's stated purpose for this project is to make millions of out-of-print, difficult to find works easy to find and available for everyone to read, a purpose which addresses some of the issues that Vannevar Bush discussed. The problem of having to sort through reams of content is made easier by Google's searchability; pinpointing a relevant Title is as easy as knowing what to search for and typing it. Their magic algorithms do the dirty work.

The article also discusses some of the legal issues associated with publishing and charging money to access old and esoteric books, where, in many cases, the author is gone and the copyright holders are unknown or unavailable. It was interesting to learn that in such cases, Google accumulates royalties for the mystery rights-holders, and should they ever come forward they have rights to those royalties, as well as complete priviliges to remove the work or set prices as they see fit. While this seems to be very generous of Google, it begs more legal questions: for instance, what right does Google have to publish these works when they are not the copyright holder, even if the true copyright holder is unknown? This is another large grey area, where its not clear if the social good of this project outweighs the potential legal hazards.