Google Book Search is a tool from Google that gives text of books that Google scans and eventually stores in its digital database. It started in 2004 as Google Print. A user searching for books may use Google Book Search, which gives an interface showing some pages from the searched book. It also contains some advertisements and links from the publisher of the website and the sellers of the book.
However, not all the pages of the book can be viewed in Google Book Search. Through the use of access limitations and some security measures, Google was able to limit the number of viewed pages and also prevents people from printing and copying some of the text.
Current Issues on Google Book Search
Presently, Google was able to reach an agreement with various authors and publishers in their various lawsuits against Google book search. Google shall be paying 125 million dollars to settle claims, which is said to be small, compared with its available 14 Billion cash. It is also said that with the settling of these claims, Google and other parties came out as winners.
Why is that? Google was able to acquire the digital rights of the books, which means more content to monetize. Other search engines don’t have access to this, which gives them a competitive advantage.
The authors and publishers also are winners because they have an initial settlement and at the same time some revenue from out of prints works. These revenues would never have been earned through the usual means.