Google Lets Publishers Use And Brand Its Book Search

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the much-easier-than-doing-it-yourself dept

We never could understand any reason, other than pride, that book publishers were building their own fragmented, expensive and limited online book scanning projects, when Google was out there willing to do it for free (and probably doing a better job of it at the same time). Now, it’s becoming even less reasonable for book publishers to go through the process themselves, as Google is offering publishers the ability to create their own co-branded version that can be integrated into their own website, even allowing them to only show books from that particular publisher. Already, McGraw-Hill has signed up (though, as the article points out, McGraw-Hill is a part of the lawsuit against Google for their book scanning project at libraries — with the difference between Google’s Library book scanning project and its regular book scanning project being the key point of contention). Either way, it’s good to see McGraw-Hill recognize that it’s probably not worth the time, money or effort to reinvent the wheel here, when Google can do a much better job.