Google Books
For those of you who have not become fanboys/fangirls of big brother, erm, Google, as I have, may not have been paying attention to the Google Books case. As such, let me give you the ten second synopsis. Google has released a product they call Google Books, it started out with them scanning public domain (PD), books, rather than keeping the scans in the PD, Google claims a copyright on them (the scans, not the books themselves), and says anyone can do anything with them for non-commercial purposes only. People get access to the books, even though there were websites such as Project Gutenberg, and everyone, except for some of the die-hard fans of copyleft, are happy. Then Google starts scanning in non-PD books. They don’t publish them, rather, they make them search-able. Copyright holders and book publishers alike complain. Google makes a deal with a single firm, paying a large amount of money to have the rights to scan in said books. Many other authors and book scanning projects such as the Internet Archive (who host our podcasts, thanks guys), complain because it’s exclusive to Google, and is opt out when it really should be Opt In. And the courts have been ablaze with this subject ever since. Should Google be allowed to make an index and show samples? And how is this different than regular Google search, which we believe to be legal? Are two of the largest questions being asked.
Wow that was a mouthful, but you are now up to speed, well, sort of…today, the French government has decided to fine Google 15 million euros, plus 10 thousand euros a day, until they fix their problem. Although Google is, quite possibly, powerful enough to pay that, not to mention they are appealing, and will likely get a smaller fine, why should they pay it? Rather, Google could just say “Fine, you don’t like our company, we’ll just take our search engine and leave”, at which point, what are the French to do, make there own Google? While they could try to make their own Google, it would fail miserably. Than again, if anyone had the goll to do it, and to stick with it, it is the French, so sure, go for it. After all, Google and Bing (notice I didn’t mention Yahoo), could use a good third competitor, still, good luck getting the market-share that Google has. Even if the French do make their own version of Google, I think that they will eventually relinquish, although they won’t put that in thier PR release.
Should this be a concern? When a single corporation has enough power to make a country tremble, isn’t that going a bit too far. Even the once notorious Microsoft does not wield that much power, as both Linux, and Apple, but especially Linux (because I am also a linux fanboy, and have a thing against Apple’s draconian policies). Sure Google has a competitor, Bing. Google also claims that for every App that they have, their is a competitor that does the exact same thing, and Google goes the extra mile to make certain that you can move your data to their platform. To a certain extent, I believe them. After all, I’m writing this blog on wordpress, not blogger, because I believe wordpress is more powerful, and will allow me to grow more (once I get more than 15 views a day). Still, none of these services provide the integrated environment that Google does (Mmmm…sounds a little like Apple, doesn’t it).
I say yes, this is a concern. Any time someone talks about splitting up Google, Google itself, along with Google fanboys, such as myself, come to it’s aid saying, “Would you rather have an inefficient entity run Google, like the government, or would you rather have a proven efficient group of people called Google, run Google?” I’m starting to think that that is not enough. Even if Google is proven to be efficient, and Google’s slogan is “Don’t Be Evil”, is that really enough? Even with Google’s commitment to open source technology, that is still not enough (although it does make us more willing to trust them). What does Google need to do? I don’t know, feel free to tell me, but the general gist is they need to become such a size that if they were to suddenly turn evil, or if they were to fail (although they are more likely to turn evil before they fail), then the whole world should not shake at there falling.
There it is, from the mouth of a self admitted Google fanboy, Google, you are too big, even if you are very cuddly.
You can read more about the lawsuite here:
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200952/4989/Google-Books-takes-another-legal-body-blow
