Comments on: google books – whoa

By: Hugh

Hugh — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 02:32:40 +0000

@cali: “Of course, all the scans are copyright even for the pd works.” they may like to claim that, but they are wrong. pd works are pd no matter what the origin. they can’t claim a copyright because they are reproducing it in a new medium.

By: cali

cali — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 02:25:45 +0000

Yes, they have agreements with the publishers but if you look around a while you’ll find not all books have the same level of visibility and some none at all. The point seems to be, from something I read on it a while ago, to offer book store/library type browsing from the comfort of your couch. Then when you find something you like you’re supposed to go buy it. They do have a good selection of public domain scans though, if you select full view in your search. Very useful, that. Of course, all the scans are copyright even for the pd works.

I’ve been getting a lot more google book results in searches lately, so I would say yes they are going to be favored in searches. As an example if you google Northanger Abbey, the google book comes up first, gutenberg is seventh on the list. Some gutenberg books aren’t even that lucky these days and are buried a couple of pages in.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:37:26 +0000

@phil: point taken about entire. but it’s defn more than a few pages. (updated above). still if the purpose is to search books, then it seems – well, not very useful. my guess is this is google saying: “this is the future. all we have to do is press a button and everything goes online.” to force us all to think about the potential here, which is significant. for instance, what if google pays publishers a % of ad revenues generated from serving their books? that would be a decent work-around that might benefit publishers. god knows publishers are clueless about the changing world on the web.

@michael: yes … a funny notice. maybe it means: we don’t have to obey laws because we are google, but you do.

By: Michael Park

Michael Park — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 02:52:16 +0000

It says ‘copyrighted material’ at the bottom, I wonder what that is intended to do… Oh google…

By: Phil Crissman

Phil Crissman — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 02:45:18 +0000

I’m not sure what deal, if any, Google has with publishers… but the “entire” book is not available. At least, when I followed your link… many pages are missing. Notably, near the end it’s noted that pages “94-216 are not a part of this book preview.” It looks like a dozen or so pages at the end of each chapter are missing, also.

Regardless, I think your questions are good ones. I’ve been kind of bewildered by the service since they introduced it… just enough pages to read part of a book, but not enough to read all of it… why? A partial answer could be to encourage people to buy the book, but I’m sure it has more to do with “organizing the world’s information”…