Google defends digital book decision

30 Apr 2009

Google is defending its online book deal despite an expected investigation to examine whether or not the book search agreement with authors and publishers violates anti-trust laws.

In October Google reached a settlement to create a $125m (£85m) fund to pay authors to have their work digitised.

The deal still needs court approval however. This week the deadline was extended to September for others to oppose it.

Now that the justice department has become involved, Google has taken the opportunity to blog explaining the benefits of putting millions of books online.

"As the discussion continues, it's important to understand what readers stand to gain," wrote Adam Smith, the director of product management for Google Book Search.

In his post, Mr Smith outlined a number of scenarios where readers could benefit. These include being able to access out-of-print, or so-called "orphaned" books where the authors cannot be found, as well as being able to get hold of more books in foreign languages.

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