Friday, November 20, 2009
Google Books Settlement Proceedings to Drag on Until Mid-February
The latest revision of the Google Books settlement has been granted preliminary approval by a New York district judge, though it will be some time before that approval is finalized–if it is finalized. Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York said Thursday that he will hold a hearing Feb. 18 on the new agreement, which will restore access to millions of out-of-print books, but may also one day give the company a monopoly on the largest digital library in the world.
Google claims that its Book Search settlement will “bring back to life millions of lost books in a way that serves the interest of all.” And if that truly is its goal, the company is going to have to put its own Brobdingnagian self interests second to those of others–if only for a little while. To wit, Google’s announcement Monday of a number of concessions to the European Union, which seems a bit dubious of the whole thing.
Amazon hasn’t said how many Kindles it has sold since launching the device in 2007, but it may soon be selling quite a few more of them. The company today dropped the price of the six-inch Kindle to $299–$60 off of its previous price. That’s certainly not a dramatic reduction, but it may be enough to drive consumers who’ve held off on purchasing the device to reconsider.
Google’s gone and run afoul of the Department of Justice again. Its interest piqued by the growing outcry over the company’s proposed book-search settlement with authors and publishers, the agency has opened an inquiry. 
Rather than argue with the Authors Guild over the text-to-speech feature of its new Kindle 2 e-book reader, Amazon is modifying the device’s software to make it optional. Authors and publishers will now be able to decide if they want the function enabled or not on titles for which they own the rights.
Harvard University, which eagerly signed onto Google’s controversial book scanning project in 2005, isn’t so keen on the project now that the company’s agreed to settle the lawsuits questioning its legality. Troubled by uncertainties in the settlement, Harvard will not participate in Google’s in-copyright book scanning effort–even if Google’s recent $125 million settlement with the Authors Guild and an alliance of five major publishers is approved.
How well is Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader really doing? Well, according to Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney, whose analytical prowess enables him to extrapolate sales figures from little more than Kindle’s sales ranking on Amazon’s Web site and from the number of customer reviews it has received, the Kindle is doing quite well. But according McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Tim Bueneman, who’s actually, you know, spoken with some Amazon officials, it might not be selling as well as Mahaney claims.
Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader may not be the iPod of the book world yet. But it will be some day if Citigroup research analyst Mark Mahaney has anything to say about it. In a report to clients Monday, Mahaney, who in May predicted the device would generate $750 million for Amazon by 2010, said the company could be on track to sell as many as 380,000 Kindles this year.
