While some may wonder what the next step for the search engine industry to take, Google may have already answered that question. Ever evolving, Google has their eyes set on the future with news of their newest innovation, Google Print. Not only will the search engine’s newest entity allow room for an exponential amount of growth, Google’s written word department may also open new avenues for search engine marketers to pursue.

The announcement of Google Print revealed the search engine would be “partnering” with five academic institutions in order to convert the public domain of their print libraries into a digital format that can then be indexed. According to the BBC, four of the five are prestigious universities including Stanford, Oxford, Harvard, and Michigan. The fifth institution to give Google access is the New York Public Library. Google hopes to have this digitized content available to the public by 2010.

A comment from the Harvard Gazette explains the university’s outlook for the project: “If the pilot is deemed successful, Harvard will explore a long-term program with Google through which the vast majority of the University's library books would be digitized and included in Google's searchable database. Google will bear the direct costs of digitization in the pilot project.

By combining the skills and library collections of Harvard University with the innovative search skills and capacity of Google, a long-term program has the potential to create an important public good.”

While the goal for Google Print is explained on their about page: “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Since a lot of the world's information isn't yet online, we're helping to get it there. Google Print puts the content of books where you can find it most easily – right in Google search results.”

Although Google Print is in the pilot stage, the future looks promising. The possibilities of having these incredible libraries literally at one’s fingertips is staggering. No longer will research original text from literary masterpieces considered a daunting task. A few simple keywords will alleviate the majority of the legwork. While this may come across as common knowledge, John Battelle also give another reason to be optimistic about Google’s newest endeavor, “this move clearly puts Google in the category of innovator when it comes to adding information to their index.”

However, the very reason John gave for his optimism also led him to have some interesting thoughts:

“Google's job was not to build the web, its job was to organize it and make it accessible to us… But all this new Print material, well, it's never been on the web before. It's Google who is actively bringing it to us. How, therefore, does Google rank it, make it visible, surface it, and..importantly...monetize it? If a philanthropist were to drop the entire contents of the Library of Congress onto the web, Google would ultimately index it, and as folks linked to the content, that content would rise and fall as a natural extension of everything else on the web. But in this case, Google itself is adding content to the web, and is itself surfacing the content based on keywords we enter. This is a new role - one of active creator, rather than passive indexer.”

Undoubtedly, Google Print does redefine the role the search engine has been playing since its inception. No longer will Google by merely indexing the web; they will be adding vast amounts of content as well.

John also mentioned the monetize-ation of Google’s upcoming feature. This is another area that Google Print may help energize: search engine marketing. Although Google Print isn’t going to be available for some time, once launched, the amount of search engine real estate available for advertising will increase a great deal. This dwindling space has become an issue to some marketing experts. John also introduces other avenues that Google may be able to monetize, breaking their dependence on advertising revenue, an issue that was noted in their IPO filing, “it's a very short distance between that and, say, an affiliate link to Amazon or any other booksellers for a cut of an in copyright sale. It's also a very short route to the on demand publishing of an out of print and out of copyright book with a company that is set up to do such a deal…” Google the publisher? To quote the guys from the Guinness commercial, BRILLANT!

However, with every new innovation, there are potential pitfalls that can be encountered. A couple of conversations deal with some of these. Like non-destructive scanning; no doubt a priority from these academic pillars. There are also rumblings of how the American Library Association will react. But, we have quite a bit of time until the problems become reality. Of course, if Google can’t meet the expected launch window, these rumblings will grow ever louder…

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I was wondering if anyone has ever written about a basic stuff up by Google in the format of their pages. From an Adword experinced customer I find Google's inability to show any respect to adword customers needs. Tell me this, when you read a book, or look at a web page which side do you normally start to read from? may I guess the left hand side? Well, if that is typical of most readers fom the western hemisphere (as opposed to Asian countries that read from right to left) Adword customers are not getting their ads read first. Who realy cares about what extras Google does for the web surfer, how about the concerns of those who pay Google the big dollars to be seen? I e-mailed both Google AU and Google USA and both came back with a "I can't really be bothered to deal with you" type reply that added further insult.

It also never ceases to amaze me that webproworld and the likes spend so much time over what google is doing and not giving search engines like Findwhat.com a bit of free advertising. I pay to be in findwhat.com because like a number of search engines with relevent web sites it eliminates the diatribe that many people place on the net just to be read. Typical of that is this new soapbox called bloggs. Google is going to continue to be infiltrated by those who can manipulate the search engine rather than quality content and those that offer products or services based on the keywords they submit because those keywords are relevent to what they have to offer.

I get very annoyed seeing blogged keywords, keywords I use because I have a quality content web site that's overlooked by google. you will contradict what I am saying because you believe any information is worth reading. Quality content is worth reading or accessing and nothing else.

Google is by far the worst mainstreem search engine that gives relevancy no respect whatsoever. There adwords program may as well be concidered an internet scam ( unless you spend 1,000.00 a day that is ) and if you do you're offering your money up to at leats 35% of your cash being taken from click fraud.

I personally own several websites and would like to show you an example from my point of view:
I own StableWebHosting.com so I will use that URL as an example.

# 2 in Yahoo for "stable web hosting"
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=sta...b-t&fl=0&x=wrt

#1 in MSN beta for "stable web hosting"
http://beta.search.msn.com/results.a...ting&FORM=QBHP

NOWHERE TO BE FOUND IN THE FIRST 1,000 RESULTS in Google for "stable web hosting"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=stable+web+hosting

A persons internet experience should not be weighed on a Google merrit system. They tell me my above stated website is not important. Well that's their opinion and it's incorrect according to all other mainstreem search engines. I am now supposed to trust these people to accurately report the news? PuuhhLeeeze! Not in my lifetime.

In my conversations with dozens of other webmasters I have business relationships with; we all conclude the same thing. Google is actually on it's way out and if you own Google stock sell it now! If my research and polls asked to webmasters I conclude that the vast majority of people using Google presently are TEENAGERS and end users that have no clue and think Google is the internet.

As the saying goes: "Nothing stays the same, everything changes"

DO everyone a favor and set your homepage to beta.search.msn.com

Take care everyone. Hope I did'nt offend anyone.

You certainly said a lot vader. I have to agree with you with the fact that the results Google displays at times can definately be more relevant. Theri search results have been, for a while now, on a spammy trend.

Regardless of "who" uses Google search you have to remember that "more" people use Google search. Taking great concern in what your rankings are with them, if you are a contractor, is your job.
Also, you can't just expect your results to be the same in all three SE's. From what I understand, Yahoo! and MSN use close to the same algos. Google's is totally different. You would only expect to have to do something different with them.

In surfer's eyes, Google is it. You need to do what you can, if you care about your SE traffic, to deal with the results they display.

You will never be mad about the traffic you are getting without Google results if your Yahoo! and MSN are good. But you'll see what you were missing once you start to get them.

All this IMHO.

Nice article Chris. I had not seen anything on this before. It's going to be a great advantage for everone who will need to access the information contained within these libraries. Glad to see Google is doing what the internet was made for. The transfer of information.

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I read other articles about the google project during these days.

It is a project that will take 10 years to be completed, so it is better to wait a couple of years before judging it.

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Let me get this straight...

Google is going to put library content on line? Like books?

Like copywrited books?

I agree that googles results are pretty cra))y, and I have no doubt this would improve them, but isn't there a little issue here of copywrite infringement? Why buy a book when I can just go to nypubliclibrary.com and read it for free?

As a web designer I WANT Google indexing my results and passing them out for free. But as an author?

I figure I must have this all wrong. Even google wouldn't be so arrogant that they'd start digitizing copywrited information and posting it on the internet.

Still, it would be fun to see them leap gleefully out of their frying pan...

Vader
yahoo shows maindirectory above you and it reminds me of bloggsville. You are right about google and this is a typical example of what I mean about google, a lot of irrelevancy As a payer in google you would expect better service over a bloody blogg or a sight that has abused the weaknesses of google. This was proven in another article that blogging can come first and that makes for crap service, not just to the surfer but to those who pay the big dollars. 35%.... that's not far from the truth!

vader

Just a bit of info about your links page - the title is "Stable Wen Hosting"! It's all well and good to rant and rave at Google or any other search engine but, IMHO, they are all doing a fantastic job, considering the amount of information that is out there! We have to do all we can with our websites to ensure that the information we are supplying to the crawlers is accurate!

scouser

Ouch!!

This will really be an excellent resource for webmasters. Much of the information online now is not worth the effort of skimming.

However, I am wondering how this will affect marketing. I have a site on ADHD. When the New york public library is now indexed on Google along with Harvard and all the others, it may make getting near anywhere the first three pages of Google nearly impossible.

Having a MA in Library and Information Science, I've always viewed the potential of the web being the World Wide Library, rather than the WWW. So, I was delighted by Google's news release and have spent a bit more time looking into it.

1) The books to be scanned are all in the public domain, i.e., out-of-copyright.

2) USA Copyright Laws: Copyright protection is afforded a much longer period than a patent. If a work is copyright after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Under the Copyright Extension Act, otherwise known as the Sunny Bono Copyright Extension Act, for works published before 1978 with existing copyrights as of the CTEA’s effective date, the CTEA extends the term to 95 years from publication.

However, any work published in the United States before 1923 are now in the public domain (this includes, for instance, the works of Mark Twain).

International Copyright Laws: There is no such thing as an “international copyright” that will automatically protect an author’s writings throughout the world. Protection against unauthorized use in a particular country basically depends on the national laws of that country. However, most countries offer protection to foreign works under certain conditions which have been greatly simplified by international copyright treaties and conventions. There are two principal international copyright conventions, the Berne Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Property (Berne Convention) and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC).

3) Currently, Google has signed agreements with five libraries. Harvard has had a library since its founding in 1636 and is one of the primary archives of Colonial America. Oxford University’s Bodleian library dates back to the 1400s. Other libaries are: Stanford University, Michigan University, and New York Public Library.

While two pilot projects have been tested, it will be approximately 2 years before a substantial archive of materials will be available. Currently, the aim is to get the 19th Century books online, and then expand deeper into archives.

4) Google has two book projects – the “Print” project is a growing library of copyrighted materials, which require paying a fee. The library project is for “in the domain” or non-copyrighted materials, due to age, and will be free to the public.

5) They have recently rolled out "Google Scholar," which accesses scholarly publications, which are usually very subject or topic-specific periodicals, found mostly in University Libraries.

6) I caught the Google Guys Biography last night, which was current to about September 2004. The Google founders view themselves as Librarians, it's strongly part of their entire mission statement and the cause of much of the chaos that paid-for people are struggling with. Their original goal was and remains accessing the huge volume of webpages as quickly as possible, and as relevantly as possible.

Part of the reason that they went public this past summer with a stock offering was to move forward with their library project (funding for it).

7) They started their original algorithm, based on authoritative sites (sites with the most incoming links). While they've adapted and changed the algorithm, this is still primary to their outlook.

They are battling multiple issues due to the growth of the net. One of which is that they aren't nearly as commerical-site leaning as businesses would like, partially because businesses are selfish in nature and want high ranking, regardless of genuine content. All of the chaos that ensued a year ago when "florida" algorithm updated was to try and clean out many of the sites that had cheated their way into high rankings.

There will always be tension between the commercial aspect of the net versus the library content aspect.

Although, they are working to develop Froogle, which is merchant-based, and is free. They also offer Catalogs, which are also business-based, and localized or regional content. In other words, they are working on the commercial site paradigm.

Many of the complaints from individual website developers don't seem to take into consideration just how much time and effort, content, incoming links, etc., that are accorded to the longer-established sites. When there are over 8 billion web pages indexed, and the vocabulary of the average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words, this means that the content of a site has no choice but to be on a collision course with many common search keywords.

Take for example, a single simple word: baby

It breaks into three primary useages: as an infant, as a derogatory term, and as a term of endearment.

Yet, it will remain the most common word used as a keyword for a search, followed by infant.

All common language keywords are similar. One can change the content of a site to reflect a different word choice; however, how many people actually use it as a keyword choice?

I think that Google does an incredible job. I'm heartened by their constant expansion of services and different methods of helping people to search for the content that they are interested in. I'm an absolute fan of their proposed library offering.

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Vader - it took me less than 10 seconds to see why Google rank you so poorly. I don't think it will be long before MSN and Yahoo drop you too. You brought it on yourself and, IMHO, deserve it for the spam. Funny what you see as Google being a bad SE, I see as them doing there job in trying to get rid of the spam.

CBP

With regards to urknighterrent's point about the Authors copyright issues there is a 'Public Lending Right' already in place that libraries use to compensate authors.

It's quite probable that Google will employ a similar tariff system to satisfy authors.

I hope that this helps.

If you notice that the letter "N" is next to the letter "M" on a keyboard you can figure this one out. We do a lot of research and I assure you nothing is done w/out good cause. : )

If it makes you feel better, it says Web once again.

Take care!

Im pleased to say you could not have been any more incorrect. Not only has MSN placed us in dozens more high traffic #1 areas, google has also become top referer to many websites. I do not value the google traffic nearly as much. Because mature audiences use MSN.

Slashdot is reporting that library results are starting to appear in the SERPs.

The example given is book origin of species.

It's funny to notice that right click is disabled with javascript. It makes it feel like a web design Hack-A-Thon.

Also worth noticing is that the ISBN at the bottom of the page is not a hyperlink. I guess Google's really only concerned about "user experience" when the ISBN's aren't hyperlinked on your site.

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