Google Books Update

The settlement agreement will not be presented to Judge Chin today as originally planned.  Instead, it should be submitted on Friday.  (Source)  Even when that happens, though, Judge Chin plans on holding a “fairness hearing” in December or January on whether to approve the settlement.  So there is still plenty more to happen.

Google Maps Navigation on Android 2.0

It was only a matter of time, really, before Google Maps became a turn-by-turn mobile application.  And now it has.  Gizmodo has a good write-up on its features and abilities, and of course it looks polished even in beta form.  (What isn’t beta in Google-land, besides GMail?  Oh.  Google Apps, actually, and a few other things.  Drat.  It was always fun to joke about how long things stayed in beta with Google.  Oh well, I guess I’ll have to fall back on making jokes about how no one knows you’re a dog on the internet.)  For right now, the application is available only to Android 2.0 users, but there are plans afoot to get it on the iPhone.

Anyway, what surprised me about the Gizmodo review of the application is this:

My fears on zero pricing, for the long term: If Google sells this in the App Store for zero dollars, those millions of bucks Apple makes off of GPS app sales will likely disappear. It’s not for us to worry about until there’s no more GPS competition except Google, and we’re dependent on their pace of progress, but no competition is a bad thing. And it’s a little strange that Google’s search money is going to pay for a free map app that is competitive with stuff that costs $100 a year from full-time GPS makers like TomTom. Unfair is the word that comes to mind. But I can’t say I don’t want this app.

I’ve written about my concerns regarding the freeconomy before, and this Engadget link essentially proves the point.  TomTom’s shares are down about 20% as of the time of this writing, and Garmin isn’t faring much better, down about 15%.  Free is nice and all, but it does have a cost.

(Sure, yeah, fine, in the long run all the buggy-whip manufacturers eventually ended up making something else, right?)

New Deadline for Google Books

Just a quickie: United States District Judge Denny Chin has set a new deadline for getting the Google Books settlement done.  The new date is November 9, 2009.  (Source)

New Life for Old Books, but a Question Arises…

As the parties in the Google Books case get back to the drafting table (this time with very special guest, the United States Department of Justice), one of the stated benefits of Google’s massive scanning undertaking seems to be taking root.  According to the AP (via the Daily Journal Online), Google has allowed 2 million of the out-of-copyright books to be published by On Demand Books.  Before I get to the somewhat boggling bits, the report states that On Demand, the maker of the Espresso Book Machine can print a 300-page book in about five minutes, and the prices will be around $8.00 per book, with On Demand keeping $1.00 and Google getting $1.00.  Presumably the balance is comprised of materials cost? (Apparently Google will be donating it’s share to charity…)

Okay, here’s the part where it gets a little weird:  “Neller of On Demand Books is thrilled just to have the right to publish selections from Google’s digital library of public domain books.”  If the books are in the public domain, it would seem that On Demand would not need permission to print them.  And yet Google has placed restrictions on what one can do with the PDFs:

• Don’t engage in large scale redistribution or rehosting of the files
• Don’t sell digital or physical copies, or help other people buy and sell them
• Don’t send automated queries to Google’s system
• Don’t remove the Google “watermark” you see on each file
• Respect the Google Terms of Service

Well, they’re guidelines more than requirements:  each of those bullets is preceded by “Please,” which is a really fudgy word, and the whole entry is prefaced with a “we ask that you follow some basic guidelines.”  I get that Google is probably trying to be approachable and not a content tyrant, which is appreciated.  And I get that there are transaction costs that are avoided by On Demand using Google as its storehouse of content, but doesn’t it seem odd that someone is getting the “right” to make copies of works that are no longer in copyright?  And isn’t that, in some way, already the concern about Google doing all this in the first place?

Anyway, I’ll admit that copyright is a thorny, complicated issue that is probably better suited to an article or book (hey, there’s an idea!) but I just wanted to point out that not all is crystal-clear in Google Books land.  This isn’t to say that there is necessarily anything inherently wrong in what On Demand and Google have agreed to do, but something about it strikes me as odd.

More on the Google Books Settlement

The Google Books settlement is generating a lot of ink over the past few days, with Microsoft wading into the waters.  According to PC Magazine, Microsoft filed objections with the Southern District of New York, arguing that Google had no right to “restructure copyright,” and that any changes should be handled by Congress.  (Microsoft posted a copy of its brief on its “Microsoft on the Issues” blog.)

Microsoft joins a fairly heavy-hitting group which objects to the settlement, including the American Law Institute (which is responsible for the various Restatements), Amazon, DC Comics, and the American Society of Media Photographers, just to name a few.

Yeah, it’s ironic that Microsoft is complaining about competition given its track record, but don’t discount its sway.  (And also don’t discount it’s probably ticked that Google is stirring things up in Europe.  Speaking of Europe, Europe isn’t so thrilled with the settlement, either…)  As Wired magazine pointed out a few months ago, Microsoft has the DOJ’s ear to a certain degree.  And given that the DOJ is investigating the settlement for competitive harm, I’m not so certain that the settlement is completely safe.

(As for whether Congress should be the ones deciding this topic, perhaps Microsoft and the others are right, but it’s not like I trust Congress to keep consumer interests in mind.  The DMCA should be proof enough of that….)

Google Books Settlement and Privacy Concerns

Google has always been a problematic company for me.  On one hand, its search engine has become the de facto starting point for the vast majority of internet users, so much so that when Google goes down (as it will from time to time), people say that the internet is broken.  (See this Ars Technica article.)  Its clean, uncluttered search interface revolutionized searching, and its results were usually spot-on, with its “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature almost always taking you where you wanted to go.  In recent years, however, my experience with Google’s ability to find what I’m looking for has dwindled as SEO services have cluttered up search results, which is why I often use Bing or Yahoo! in addition to or instead of Google.

I’ve complained before of Google’s data-mining and -tracking, as well as its emphasis on “Cloud” computing. And now, there’s a new bug in my craw: Google Books.

Hiring Practices and Antitrust Concerns

It may not be as sexy as hearing that corporations have colluded with eachother to keep prices high (say in the TFT or DRAM markets), but I see in the NY Times this morning that the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice has quietly opened an antitrust investigation into tech companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Apple, and others.  According to the Times, the direction of the inquiry is unclear, but seems to be focused on “whether the companies involved agreed to not actively recruit employees from each other.”  See?  Not very sexy.  The Washington Post apparently was the first one to mention the investigation.

Bing!

I’m not entirely sure I like the name of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.  Actually, I’m pretty sure I don’t.  But, whatever, it’s new and shiny, and everyone’s playing with it.

My first impression is that it’s fine, generally no worse than Yahoo!, but probably not quite as “accurate” as Google.  (For what it’s worth, I’m beginning to feel that Google’s accuracy is leaving a lot to be desired.)

However, there’s one thing that I think really needs a little tweaking.  The interface is really pretty, with lots of pictures and interactive features (which makes it all the more impressive that it loads so quickly), but the froufrou aspects do have the potential to get in the way of the stated function, which is searching.  For example, using Firefox, if you go to bing.com, and just click on Images, you get a list of things that are similar to the background image.  All well and good.  But say you don’t want your results filtered, so you click on the safe search moderate “change” link, and this is what you get:

It seems to work properly, however, in IE7:

Will Bing become my search engine of choice?  I doubt it, but not because of its functionality.  Indeed, I very strongly want there to be search competition against Google, because of what that monolith has done to the advertising market.  No, I’ll be sticking with Yahoo! for my searches because I have been feeling ill at ease about using Google so much, what with their data retention policies.  According to this Lifehacker post, it looks like Yahoo! is the clear winner, retaining data for only 90 days, while Google holds on to it for 9 months, and Microsoft holds on to it for 18 months(!!).  (I should note, that the 18 months figure comes from MS’s statements vis-a-vis Live.com, which Bing replaces.  I doubt that MS will change that policy just because they’re launching a rebranded search engine.)

Changing Antitrust Landscape

The United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division has signaled a change in how the federal government will be looking at anticompetitive behavior.  According to a press release issued today, “the Department is withdrawing, effective immediately, a report relating to monopolization offenses under the antitrust laws that was issued in September 2008. As of today, the Section 2 report will no longer be Department of Justice policy. Consumers, businesses, courts and antitrust practitioners should not rely on it as Department of Justice antitrust enforcement policy.”

Behind this shift in policy appears to be recognition that “recent developments in the marketplace should make it clear that we can no longer rely upon the marketplace alone to ensure that competition and consumers will be protected.”  

The New York Times has a little more information about the shift, including Assistant Attorney General Varney’s speech.  We are apparently about to see the return of late-90s enforcement policies, which led to suits against Intel and Microsoft.  Additionally, Google may be under the microscope, though Bloomberg states that Ms. Varney has declined to name the tech behemoth individually; speculation has been rampant as of late, however.  (See Ars Technica, TechCrunch, and others…)

Probably a Smart Move

Google’s walking away from Yahoo “to avoid a legal battle with federal antitrust regulators who had notified the companies that they were planning to file a lawsuit to block the agreement.”  (Source)  In the long run, I think this is going to be seen as a smart move, even thought it’s being spun as bad for both parties.