Yahoo says non to Google in its court case over Google Library/Book Search. I’m late to the game on this one and running to a meeting, so read what the AP says here:
Yahoo has rebuffed Google’s attempt to learn more about its efforts to create digital copies of books, dealing Google another setback as it prepares to fight a copyright infringement suit.
In rejecting Google’s request, Yahoo adopted the same stance taken last month by the Internet retailer Amazon.com, and called Google’s request a brazen attempt to pry into its trade secrets.
Google says it believes it can defend its plans to provide online access to millions of library books by obtaining more details about similar projects involving rivals.
Is this one of your typical anti-Yahoo(pro-Google) posts? or do you have a point to convey?
Hmm, am I really so pro Google? You been reading lately? I find myself pretty balanced, but then I am never sure…the point here was to report on Yahoo’s point, quickly.
RE: Prem’s comment:
Battelle you GOOGLEY man you!
(Frankly I think you are very objective. Google get more attention because they are the king ‘o search for now.
Poor Google, all they want is a little literary helping hand and they get the cold shoulder from Yahoo. We should chip in and send the big G a care package with a book, a pizza and a decoder ring.
Frankly, this seems to touch on issues that you’ve discussed before, John. One of the interesting sticking points with Google’s book-search project is this:
It’s great that they want to create a brand-new, digital library-of-Alexandria repository, but who owns it? Who owns the images, the database, the data? Google? The authors? The publishers?
In theory, the information belongs to the authors, and Google is just making it easy to find. But in that case, why not give all the data over to competitors’ book-search projects, in the spirit of sharing human knowledge together?
I mean, if Google’s only in it to share information, wouldn’t Google benefit from getting the scanned images & data from Yahoo & Amazon’s project? And wouldn’t humanity benefit if Google gives its scanned images & data to Yahoo & Amazon for their sites?
It’s one thing to be about sharing human knowledge. It’s something else altogether to be about making *your*own* service the #1 service out there, and any competitors in that space can just piss off.
Sounds to me like Google wanted a peek under Yahoo’s hood, but hasn’t offered its own site transparently. Yahoo said, “nyet”, and that’s that.