Interesting to think of Amazon being disrupted by Google books, as set out here.
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First you need to install the free Google Books app and the Chrome Internet browser.
Both the DOJ and a Federal court opposed the Google Books Settlement because it would create a new online book monopoly.
Besides drawing from Google Patents, the finder displays results from Google Scholar, Google Books and the web's other nooks and crannies.
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Material which is out of print in the US, but still available for sale elsewhere, will not be added to Google Books, unless consent is granted.
Hundreds of thousands of Sony Readers have sold and you can now read five hundred thousand public-domain Google Books on it in ePub format but, oddly, people ignore it.
In the US, copyright holders get 63% of the price of each book printed to order from Google Books, with the Internet service retaining the remaining 37%.
Google has just informed us that a new version of the app is incoming, a version that will add tabs for easy access to Google Books and Movies.
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When combined with the free online textbooks at sites like Textbook Revolution and TextBooksFree, plus other course books from Google Books, World Public Library, and Project Guttenberg, M.
You might expect this to be a revolutionary new collaborative effort at delivering the written word in a way that makes Google Books pale into insignificance, but you would, of course, be wrong.
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Google Books lists nearly three million free e-books, which can be browsed by clicking on its Free Classics shelf and can be read on most devices, except for Kindles that aren't the KindleFire.
Thank you Google Books, you may go now.
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In October, 2004, without the permission of publishers and authors, Google announced that, through its Google Books program, it would scan every book ever published, and make portions of the scans available through its search engine.
Once digitised, these unique items will be available for full text search, download and reading through Google Books, as well as being searchable through the Library's website and stored in perpetuity within the Library's digital archive.
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Should the settlement be cleared, it will permit Google non-exclusive rights to orphan works (those without an established writer) and will give it a 30 per cent cut of books sold via Google Books, both things that authors have agreed to.
ENGADGET: Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo unite against Google Books
Whether or not the settlement is ultimately approved by the U.S. courts, Google will open an online e-books store, called Google Editions, by the middle of the year, Dan Clancy, the engineer who directs Google Books, and who will also be in charge of Google Editions, said.
He authored "World Wide Web Searching For Dummies" before Google existed, and later wrote three books about Google, which are now antiques.
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Nor are the books Google has already chosen to scan necessarily a representative sample of literature across the ages.
And according to the just-released Google blog post, Instant will come to Google News, Books, Blogs, Updates and Discussions.
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In addition to a Google Web Reader application, users will be able to read Google e-books on apps for Android, iPhone and iPad devices.
Google E-books is also launching with an affiliates program in place.
Also, many of Google's books are out-of-print volumes from before 1923.
If Google scans copyrighted books into its library database, the digital copies might be misused and laws will be broken, says Peter Givler, executive director of the Association of American University Presses.
This allows independent booksellers with loyal customer bases to advertise and sell Google e-books via their own venues and take an (as of yet undisclosed) cut of the revenue, an opportunity previously denied to them.
As I noted in my original piece, the issue that concerns me is not about Google digitising the world's books, but about only Google doing so.
Instead of purchasing e-books through a single online store to read only on compatible software (i.e. books bought from the Kindle Store can only be read on Kindle apps), Google lets consumers buy books either from its store or any other online vendor that sells books in EPUB and PDF formats, and read them on any device with a web browser.
And yesterday authors objecting to Google stealing and copying their books without their permission filed a class action copyright infringement suit against Google.
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Meanwhile, the librarians helping Google scan truckloads of books are undaunted by the latest concerns.
Authors and publishers would get 70% from the sale of these books with Google keeping the remaining 30%.
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