Google Settles Book Lawsuits For $125 Million

I found this rather interesting.....

Google will pay $125 million to settle two lawsuits with authors and publishers. The settlement effectively gives the company the go-ahead to digitize millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search.

Subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the agreement - reached after two years of negotiations - resolves a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Under the settlement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million which will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers, and to cover legal fees.

Holders worldwide of U.S. copyrights will be able to register their works with the Book Rights Registry and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment if their works have already been digitized.

Thank you Kirkbank for this article.

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Google To Launch Friend Connect

Google announced they will launch Friend Connect, an exciting new service that will allow any site to be turned into a social network, absolutely free. Essentially, it will turn the internet one huge, universal social profile.
Google wanted to tap into the hundreds of million of people using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, but instead of launching a competing site, they launched the service which turns the internet itself into one humongous social networking platform which can be used by anyone, free of charge.
“Using Google’s new Friend Connect product, any Web page, whether it is devoted to curling or pizza or a folk singer, can allow visitors to make and connect with other ‘friends’ who visit that site,” the Washington Post explains. “Like any major social network today, any Web page using Friend Connect could easily present to each user the names and pictures of friends and potential friends. Those people could then post messages to one another.”
This could change everything, and Google loves that about it.
“We’re in the middle of a huge change,” says David Glazer, an engineering director working on Google Friend Connect. “Wherever people go on the Web, they want to have their friends with them, and this makes it possible.”


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