tagged w/ Search Engine News
-
Google and Amazon: Making Theft and Price-Fixing the Legal Default
By Alex Green
For the first time in American history, a single corporation is attempting to gain full ownership of an extraordinary number of books printed during the last century, effectively controlling their dissemination by default without the consent of those who still hold valid copyrights. In early September authors and their representatives ran out of time to invoke ownership of their own writing and opt out of a legally questionable settlement. The settlement, which is pending in federal court, reveals Google Inc.'s unprecedented attempt to invert the United States copyright structure and monopolize control of a huge swath of intellectual property.
The current agreement, reached in 2008 between Google, The Authors Guild of America, and the Association of American Publishers has touched off the most vociferous public battle between technology companies since the inception of the Internet. At stake is supremacy in the coveted marketplace of content ownership and book digitization. The Justice Department filed strong objections to the settlement last week, registering concerns that Google has violated anti-trust laws by gaining such broad control without legal supervision. Those concerns resulted in a request by all three parties this week for a postponement of the court’s ruling while they rewrite the agreement.
Online book retailer Amazon.com, Google’s non-profit rival The Internet Archive, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other media companies have joined an umbrella organization called The Open Book Alliance to combat Google’s advance. In recent weeks they have filed a barrage of complaints to the court and Congress. Their appeals and public statements have exposed for the first time large areas of legal uncertainty in an industry known for widespread avoidance of public legal battles and legislative interference.
In their legal assault, Amazon appears to have suggested its own involvement in business practices that have widely been considered unethical and potentially illegal. An Amazon spokesperson told the Associated Press last month that if Google were to gain control of the marketplace his company would no longer be able to obtain low prices for customers by, “playing one publisher off against another." Their statement implies the use of manipulative negotiating practices to receive books at lower wholesale prices than competitors despite the existence of legal precedents that restrict large companies from receiving disproportionately favorable discounts.
The Author’s Guild has also come under fire, with critics questioning the right of an advocacy group to negotiate on behalf of authors who did not seek their support. If upheld, such a broad invocation of representative power by a guild would be unprecedented in American history.
Compounding the problem is the prevalence of conflicts of interest among board members of nearly every party involved in the litigation. One particularly disconcerting example involves the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers which currently has three partners serving as board members or advisers to Google or Amazon, including John Doerr who is a board member at all three companies.
The triumvirate of Kleiner board members also includes former Vice-President Al Gore who is a senior advisor to Google. Gore’s presence is a reminder of the close proximity between the political establishment that first gave rise to broad Internet use and the now-powerful companies that benefited from government encouraged non-regulation throughout the 1990’s and into this decade.
The rise of these companies has created an institutionalized imbalance predicated on the absence of basic legal strictures in the technology sector. Without regulation tech companies have fed a decade-long ascendancy on a margin of profit derived from their near universal exemption from state tax laws...Google and Amazon: Making Theft and Price-Fixing the Legal Default
By Alex Green... more
-
-
LeapFish offers one of the world’s fastest search platforms delivering instantaneous search results from the variety of the Web as you type.
Every letter you type reloads the search results to match the keywords. And don’t worry about load times- it does this at lightning speeds. So instead of typing in full words, you can get the result you’re looking for in half the time. Video, news, blog and image results line the page neatly and cleanly, making sure that you don’t need to go searching multiple pages or queries to find information.LeapFish offers one of the world’s fastest search platforms delivering... more
-
-
As if the first version wasn't fast enough to start with, Google's Beta of their Chrome 2 browser is reportedly 'twice as fast' as its predecessor.
Google are claiming that the latest build of Chrome will be 25% faster on the V8 benchmark and 35% quicker on Sunspider, as well as nearly 50% quicker than the original beta version.
And if that's not enough, it will be able to auto-fill forms for you, zoom entire webpages and a drag feature on tabs to show 'side-by-side views of pages.'
Sounds ace, here's hoping it'll available on a Mac...As if the first version wasn't fast enough to start with, Google's Beta of... more
-
-
Week in search engine news: Google announces an update to analytics, and also launches a US voter information page. Yahoo! Inquisitor available for firefox and IE, and Android launches.Week in search engine news: Google announces an update to analytics, and also launches... more
-
-
Week in search news - what is going on around the web, VideoSurf, Ad Spending, and GAN updatesWeek in search news - what is going on around the web, VideoSurf, Ad Spending, and GAN... more
-
-
Internet marketing, and all the terms that go with it, mean different things to different people. Below are a few terms common to the industry, followed by brief definitions about what I understand them to mean.Internet marketing, and all the terms that go with it, mean different things to... more
-
-
Search engine news from around the web this week. Google's tenth birthday, Satellite, and Picasa 3.0Search engine news from around the web this week. Google's tenth birthday,... more
-
-
Nearly four years in development, Google today finally rolled out its Search Suggestions product to the main page of Google.com. Suggest started as a 20% project and was launched on Google Labs in December 2004. The feature “graduates” from Labs and will be rolled out to users over the next week or so (I can’t see it yet on Google Australia).
Since launching the project on Labs 4 years ago, Google has launched the search suggest service slowly on some of its other services including the Toolbar, Firefox search box, and YouTube. What took Google so long in bringing it to the homepage? According to Search Engine Land: quality control. “Quality is very important to us, and since so many people visit the Google.com homepage, we wanted to make sure to evaluate and refine our algorithms to provide a good experience using Google Suggest,” a Google rep told SEL.
Search suggestions is actually an area where Google lags behind the competition. A few other search engines had search suggestions when Google began their Suggest project in 2004, and Yahoo! rolled out a major upgrade to their search suggestions, called Search Assist, about a year ago. Yahoo!’s product is actually arguably still a bit more complete than Google’s offering.Nearly four years in development, Google today finally rolled out its Search... more
-
-
What is going on in search engine news around the web!
-
-
Last week in news from the search engine industry. Hot topics include more talks between Yahoo! and Microsoft and Ask.com making a deal with Photobucket.Last week in news from the search engine industry. Hot topics include more talks... more
-
-
This article brings together the ideas of social media and search results. It discusses how social media included in your online marketing efforts can help in search results.This article brings together the ideas of social media and search results. It... more
-
-
Weekly roundup of news from the search engine industry.
-
-
News from last week in the search engine world.
-
-
The latest addition to Google Maps is a feature that allows you to see the “Street View,” and scroll along the street, as if you were walking/driving. This feature has mostly only been added to big cities in the U.S. but is likely to spread.The latest addition to Google Maps is a feature that allows you to see the... more
-
-
New happenings in the search engine industry last week.
-
-
A new search engine that mashes up information you are looking for, making the experience easier for the user. At this point Wikipedia and Freebase are the only information sources included in the search engine, however more will be included in the future. Very interesting concept and idea!A new search engine that mashes up information you are looking for, making the... more
-
-
Google trademark explanation and Google changes their policy in the UK to match that in the US.Google trademark explanation and Google changes their policy in the UK to match that... more
-
-
Interesting article about Google's decision making.
-
