Google Books

The U.S. Justice Department is making antitrust inquiries into Google Inc.'s settlement with authors and publishers over the Internet giant's project to scan millions of books and put them online. Some authors and Google critics have complained that the deal, agreed upon last year and pending a judge's approval, would hurt competition by giving the company a stranglehold over the burgeoning market for online books.

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Amazon.com Inc. warned a federal judge that Google Inc. would be able to gouge consumers and stifle competition if it won court approval to add millions more titles to its already vast digital library. The harsh critique of Google's 10-month-old settlement with U.S. authors and publishers emerged in a brief Amazon filed in an attempt to persuade U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to block the agreement.

Google Inc.'s settlement with authors and publishers over the digital scanning of books got a preliminary approval from a federal judge last week, but the controversy may be far from over. In fact, legal experts and industry observers who have been closely following the case believe the fight over Google's ambitious book-scanning efforts is just starting all over again. At issue is the ability of the Mountain View, Calif., search company to make available on the Internet digital copies of millions of out-of-print books and "orphan" books, works whose copyright holders cannot be found.

Google Inc. is being sued by French publisher La Martiniere for indexing some of the company's titles on the Google Book Search website without permission. La Martiniere, which controls Harry N. Abrams Inc. in the U.S., is fighting Google's program to scan the content of books and let users search them. "We disagree with their case, which we will contest in court," Google said. "Google Book Search helps users find and buy books -- not read or download them for free."

The millions of out-of-print books scanned by Google Inc. and now sitting unread on the company's cyber-bookshelves will have to sit a while longer. A New York judge on Thursday ordered the postponement of a long-standing October hearing meant to address a settlement between Google and a group of authors and publishers that sued the Mountain View, Calif., company more than four years ago. Earlier this week, the publisher and author groups requested a delay in the proceedings so they could address copyright and antitrust issues raised by the Department of Justice in a brief filed last week.

In a crushing blow to Google Inc.'s grand ambition to build the world's largest digital library, a federal judge rejected the company's plans to share and sell the millions of books it has scanned over the last decade. U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin said Tuesday that Google's agreement with publishers and authors "would simply go too far" toward giving the company a major advantage over competitors in the electronic book world. The ruling, a crucial development in a five-year legal saga, effectively keeps Google from offering to the public more than 15 million books it has scanned since 2004.

Google Inc. said Friday that it had suspended its high-profile effort to scan copyrighted books from libraries into its searchable index. The Internet giant -- which sees the program as part of its grand mission to organize the world's information -- said it would wait until November before resuming the work to give publishers time to say which titles they don't want copied.

Three powerful technology companies have banded together to oppose Google Inc.'s proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers over the Internet search giant's book scanning project. Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have signed on to a coalition being assembled by the Internet Archive and Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer, said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit that is trying to build a free digital library of Internet content.