Interviews

What is and what is not Google Book Search?

The aim of Google Book Search is to make all kinds of books known and to put potential readers into contact with publishers and with the holdings of libraries from all over the world, thereby encouraging reading. This is the fundamental aim.

It is not a website for selling books, but rather for the promotion of titles. It will enable publishers to direct traffic to their own web page, if they have one, or otherwise to generate sales through third parties.

You mentioned publishers and libraries with which Google has signed a number of agreements. What are the characteristics of these agreements?

The programmes have different aims. The aim of the agreement with publishers, of the programme for members, is promotion ? to help them promote their titles world-wide, so that they may increase their sales. The aim of the project for libraries, in which 13 libraries from all over the world are participating, is to preserve their holdings and make them accessible to everyone, because this is the mission of a library! We think we can help libraries and publishers to attain their objectives.

The libraries project has engaged, among others, the universities of Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and Michigan, as well as the New York Public Library. In addition the library of the Madrid Complutense University and the Biblioteca de Catalunya (Catalonia?s National Library) have now joined in the project. Could this initiative contribute to the knowledge of the production in minority languages?

In Book Search we intend to make all books known, books of all type, in all languages, because this is what our users are looking for. In addition, the fact of doing it from a world platform in which physical barriers have vanished ? we have more than 10,000 publishers, from all parts of the world and with very varied holdings ? means that readers of books in Catalan, from Sardinia to Colombia, can find their book.

In addition to the production in minority languages, this will afford visibility to out of print, even forgotten books?

Exactly! There is an asymmetry here: on the one hand, there are readers searching for books they cannot find, and on the other, there are publishers that cannot quite promote their books satisfactorily. A tool such as Google Book Search will help to right this situation, and this translates itself into an increase of sales by publishers. It also facilitates the publication of authors who write for a minority public, as it will be easier now to acquire the minimum exposure for their work to be published and commercialised.

Despite these advantages, the launch has not been devoid of controversy, and at the time the Association of American Publishers (AAP) filed a lawsuit against Google?

Yes, but the situation that has ensued after two years of working is the opposite one. It is now the publishers themselves who talk of the benefits of Book Search, and tell us that they have seen their sales increase with all their titles. This impact can be easily attributed to the inclusion in the programme especially of those titles in the catalogue that, due to obvious reasons ? lack of space in bookshops for all books ? had not been actively promoted. As the space barriers have largely disappeared thanks to the Internet, publishers have now the chance of promoting all their holdings and not just their best-selling works.

Could this facility of access affect the intellectual or economic rights of the author?

Google works hand in hand with publishers and we respect copyright, and we do all that we can along these lines. That is why the user finds in Book Search various types of results: full texts in the case of books of public domain; a restricted view, allowing a little browsing and the visualisation of a fragment, in which some reviews are shown.

Have differences on intellectual property among world legislations posed any difficulties?

This is obviously a difficult issue, but we have managed to respect copyright laws from all countries, and this is a well known fact to users and publishers. For instance, if a publishing firm has exclusive rights for Spain, we restrict access, and these books are shown in Spain only.

From the left to the right: Lluís Miró, from the University of Valencia's Publications Service; Pablo Lara, a Lecturer at the UOC; Santiago de la Mora, of Google Book Search; Paul Shemilt, from the University of Cambridge Press and Ricardo Acebes, from the library of the Madrid Complutense University, in the debating forum ‘The Future of the Book’. In the second photograph, Santiago de la Mora giving his speech.

You have spoken about benefits to authors, readers, libraries and publishers? But some will ask themselves what the benefits obtained by Google through this initiative are?

Our mission is to organise the information and make it useful and accessible to the world: web pages, books, academic theses. Google is like a platform, a switchboard through which we can put users searching for information in contact with those producing the content. This is our mission.

Google's business model is based on traffic, and this is also a factor that gives relevance to search results. Could this affect adversely the quality of editorial output?

The truth is that it is not the traffic what determines the positioning of a book, but a very complex logarithm. Booksellers tend to display the books that sell best, not necessarily those that the user may be searching for.

The user is the centre of the system?

Absolutely! An interesting piece of information is that last October, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, we drew up our own list of best sellers in Spanish, and it was headed by the book Nombres para bebé. In other words, our list does not agree at all with the lists published by "El País", "El Mundo" or "The New York Times". Ours are not generated by literary critics from the media. They are generated by the user.

By knowing what millions of users from all over the world think, search and wish for, is Google becoming Big Brother, as John Batelle suggests in The Search?

Google is an open product where users go voluntarily in search of information; if we don?t please them, they have the flexibility to decide not to come back ? this is why we should constantly improve on the results. The user says, "I want to find books and to know where I can buy them", and this is exactly what we offer them. As for privacy, this is an issue we take very seriously indeed: users always have the option, when doing searches, of blocking their personal information.

One of the objectives of this initiative is to facilitate universal access to knowledge; but in the event that some governments may draw up lists of prohibited books, will Google censure the content, in a similar way to what happened with the search engine in China?

We must take into account that we respect the rights of author and of the publishers. If publishers have no rights to trade or display books in specific countries, we are under the obligation to block those books. Our mission is to publicise them, but if a publishing company tells us, "For this title we have exclusive rights in Spain", we must abide by this wish and show this book exclusively to users from that country.