Google has made some headlines in recent days
Google has made some headlines in recent days. GeekNewsWire.com summaries it all here:
DOJ steps up Google Books settlement probe
The Justice Department appears to be stepping up its antitrust probe of Google’s settlement last year of a class-action lawsuit filed by groups representing authors and publishers, according to reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Under the proposed $125 million settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, announced in October, Google would have the right to show content from books online that are still in copyright but that are no longer in print. In addition, those copyright holders could be paid for online sales of their books.
Google has book-search agreements in place with numerous publishers, but the company hopes that the settlement will permit it to bring many more books to into its service. In a victory for settlement opponents, a judge gave authors four more months to decide whether to participate.
Google is digitizing the works from many major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the libraries at Stanford and Harvard universities, and is making those texts searchable on pages with advertisements. The Authors Guild, which represents more than 8,000 authors, sued Google in September 2005, alleging that the company’s digitizing initiative amounted to "massive" copyright infringement. Five large publishers filed a separate lawsuit as representatives of the Association of American Publishers.
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A Google design contest for Guggenheim fans
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has teamed up with Google on an architecture contest celebrating both the museum’s 50th anniversary and the search giant’s latest 3D-modeling tool.
The two iconic organizations are asking the public to submit plans for a 100-square-foot shelter using Google Sketchup, choosing a location for the shelter via Google Earth, and using Google 3D Warehouse to upload the design and submit to the official Guggenheim contest Web site.
Once a design is submitted, it will be showcased on the Guggenheim’s "Design It: Shelter Competition" contest Web site using a Google Earth plug-in for all the public to view.
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Google releases Quick Search Box for Mac
Google has released a new Mac application that lets users search both their Macs and the Web in the same window as well as launch applications.
Google Quick Search Box was unveiled in January, but is now ready for a formal release, Google announced on its Mac Blog. It’s a pretty lightweight application that Mac users can use as a universal search tool to find local documents, applications or Web sites featuring a certain term: for example, a query for "Wilco" allowed me to launch my iTunes library of Wilco songs, read news stories about the band, and find images.
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