Google book deal facing heavyweight opposition

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 21 Aug 2009 at 09:21

Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo have waded into the growing controversy surrounding Google's move into digital book sales.

Google began digitising books from library and university shelves in 2005, intending to offer them as part of an online book service. The deal brought a lawsuit from authors and publishers who claimed it infringed copyright.

The upshot was a deal with the Authors Guild and the Association of American publishers last October, in which Google agreed to pay $125 million to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers can register works and receive a portion of revenues earned from ads, subscriptions and book sales.

The Book Rights Registry hasn't quelled the furore though, and now Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo have joined a coalition of companies led by Gary Reback - the lawyer at the forefront of the Department of Justice's antitrust investigation into Microsoft in 1998 - intended to throw a last minute spanner in the works.

Reback intends to prove that the deal violates antitrust laws and will give Google an unfair stranglehold on the digital book market - an allegation refuted by the search giant.

"The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it's understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition," says a Google spokesman.

The deal is also under investigation from both the US Justice Department and European Commission. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo would comment no further beyond acknowledging they had joined the coalition.