Has Google Already Won The Book War?; Forbes, 8/26/09

Dirk Smillie via Forbes; Has Google Already Won The Book War?:

It scanned first and asked questions later. Opponents of a rights settlement may not have a chance.

"Excerpts, and in many cases the entire contents, of a staggering number of books are readily available on Google Book Search, yet some of the most definitive works on Google itself are nowhere to be found at the site. Recent searches for Jeff Jarvis' What Would Google Do?, David Vise's The Google Story and John Battelle's The Search produced the following message: "no preview."

Snippets and excerpts of 7 million other books do show up in the database, which critics accuse of being unfairly selective and financially unjust to writers. These are some of the concerns held by William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, which last week fired off an e-mail alert to its authors, urging them to opt out of a complex settlement between Google ( GOOG - news - people ), the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/26/google-books-morris-business-media-copyright.html