Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Heavyweights unite against Google

Search engine Google has a fight on its hands as it attempts to create what could be the world's largest virtual library.

Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo have joined forces in signing up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive.

They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works.

Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle is reported as saying that Google is trying to monopolise the library system.

In 2008, the search engine giant reached an agreement with publishers and authors to settle two lawsuits that charged the company with copyright infringement for the unauthorised scanning of books.

In that settlement, Google agreed to pay $125m to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers could register works and receive compensation.

Authors and publishers would get 70% from the sale of these books with Google keeping the remaining 30%.

Google would also be given the right to digitise works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 70% of books published after 1923.

In early October, a judge in the Southern district of New York will consider whether or not to approve the class-action suit against the deal whilst the US Department of Justice is conducting an anti-trust investigation into the impact of the agreement.

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