ANNAls OF law GooglE’s mOON shot The quest for the universal library. by Jeffrey TOOBiN very weekday, a truck pulls up to the at the company’s headquarters, in Moun- Cecil H. Green Library, on the cam- tain View, California. “It’s mind-boggling pusE of Stanford University, and collects at to me, how close it is. I think of Google least a thousand books, which are taken to Books as our moon shot.” an undisclosed location and scanned, page Google’s is not the only book-scan- by page, into an enormous database being ning venture. Amazon has digitized hun- created by Google. The company is also dreds of thousands of the books it sells, retrieving books from libraries at several and allows users to search the texts; Carne- other leading universities, including Har- gie Mellon is hosting a project called vard and Oxford, as well as the New York the Universal Library, which so far has Public Library. At the University of Mich- scanned nearly a million and a half books; igan, Google’s original partner in Google the Open Content Alliance, a consortium Book Search, tens of thousands of books that includes Microsoft, Yahoo, and sev- are processed each week on the company’s eral major libraries, is also scanning thou- custom-made scanning equipment. sands of books; and there are many smaller Google intends to scan every book ever projects in various stages of development. published, and to make the full texts Still, only Google has embarked on a searchable, in the same way that Web sites project of a scale commensurate with its can be searched on the company’s engine corporate philosophy: “to organize the at google.com. At the books site, which is world’s information and make it univer- up and running in a beta (or testing) ver- sally accessible and useful.” sion, at books.google.com, you can enter a In part because of that ambition, Goo- word or phrase—say, Ahab and whale— gle’s endeavor is encountering opposition. and the search returns a list of works in A federal court in New York is consider- which the terms appear, in this case nearly ing two challenges to the project, one eight hundred titles, including numer- brought by several writers and the Au- ous editions of Herman Melville’s novel. thors Guild, the other by a group of pub- Clicking on “Moby-Dick, or The Whale” lishers, who are also, curiously, partners in calls up Chapter 28, in which Ahab is Google Book Search. Both sets of introduced. You can scroll through the plaintiffs claim that the library component chapter, search for other terms that appear of the project violates copyright law. Like in the book, and compare it with other most federal lawsuits, these cases appear editions. Google won’t say how many likely to be settled before they go to trial, books are in its database, but the site’s and the terms of any such deal will shape value as a research tool is apparent; on it the future of digital books. Google, in an you can find a history of Urdu newspapers, effort to put the lawsuits behind it, may an 1892 edition of Jane Austen’s letters, agree to pay the plaintiffs more than a several guides to writing haiku, and a Har- court would require; but, by doing so, the vard alumni directory from 1919. company would discourage potential No one really knows how many books competitors. To put it another way, being there are. The most volumes listed in any taken to court and charged with copyright catalogue is thirty-two million, the num- infringement on a large scale might be the ber in WorldCat, a database of titles from best thing that ever happens to Google’s more than twenty-five thousand libraries foray into the printed word. around the world. Google aims to scan at least that many. “We think that we can do hough Google has more than ten it all inside of ten years,” Marissa Mayer, thousand employees—about fifty a vice-president at Google who is in newT ones are hired each week—and a charge of the books project, said recently, market capitalization of more than a 30 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 5, 2007 TNY—2007_02_05—PAGE 30—133SC.—#2 page—TEXT CHANGES hundred and fifty billion dollars, the computer science that putting things on quality knowledge is captured in books. company cultivates the air of a college dead trees was obsolete and getting it all So not having that—it’s just too big an campus at its headquarters, in Silicon into a searchable, digital format was a omission.” As Marissa Mayer put it, Valley. Now and then, there are self- quest that had to be accomplished some- “Google has become known for 8; pro- consciously wacky stunts, like Pajama day,” Terry Winograd, a Stanford pro- viding access to all of the world’s knowl- Day, which happened to take place fessor who was a mentor to Page and edge, and if we provide access to books when I visited. (The event was to be Brin, said. we are going to get much higher-quality madcap within reason; supervisors were After founding Google, in 1998, Page and much more reliable information. told to convey the message that “paja- and Brin—who are now in their mid- We are moving up the food chain.” Publishers have sued Google for breaching copyright. A settlement seems likely, but it may not be in the public’s interest. mas means ‘pajamas,’ not ‘what you thirties and worth around fourteen bil- In 2002, Google quietly made over- sleep in.’ ”) When I met with Sergey lion dollars each—began to talk about tures to several libraries at major uni- Brin, a co-founder of Google, he was how to include books in the company’s versities. The company proposed to wearing bright-blue p.j.s, with the database. Page, in particular, embraced digitize the entire collection free of company’s logo stitched on the breast the idea of putting books online; at one charge, and give the library an elec- pocket. point, he set up a primitive lab in his tronic copy of each of its books. “Larry The story of how Brin and Google’s office, with a scanner and a page-turning is an undergrad alum here at Michigan, other co-founder, Larry Page, met as machine. “I think it was motivating to and he knew we were already interested graduate students in computer science at have those kinds of aspirations, but no- in digitizing the library as part of our Stanford in the mid-nineties, and de- body really took it seriously,” Brin told preservation efforts,” John Wilkin, an vised a series of elegant software algo- me. The men were less interested in associate university librarian at Michi- rithms that allowed Web searchers to making it easy for people to obtain the gan, told me. “There was a lot of back- find relevant information quickly and full texts of books online than in making and-forth between Google and us in efficiently, has become part of Silicon accessible the information those books the process. We wanted to insure that Valley lore. Less well known is that, at contained. “We really care about the the materials wouldn’t be damaged and the time, Brin and Page were also work- comprehensiveness of a search,” Brin that what came out could be used as ing on Stanford’s Digital Library Tech- said. “And comprehensiveness isn’t just a preservation surrogate. They started nologies Project, an attempt, funded by about, you know, total number of words experimenting with different ways of H T the federal government, to organize or bytes, or whatnot. But it’s about hav- copying the images, and we started different kinds of stored information, in- ing the really high-quality information. a pilot project in July, 2004. We’ve OLD RO N cluding books, articles, and journals, in You have thousands of years of human been getting better, going faster. We’re R A digital form. “There was an attitude in knowledge, and probably the highest- doubling our output all the time.” The THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 5, 2007 31 TNY—2007_02_05—PAGE 31—133SC.31—133SC.—livE ART r15903—PLS PULL KODAK FOR COLOR GUIDANCE—#2 page—TEXT CHANGES Michigan library holds seven million books is called up in response to search demand that Google stop further copy- volumes, and Wilkin believes that Google queries, Google displays a portion of the ing and “destroy all unauthorized copies will have copied the entire collection in total work and shows links to the pub- made by Google through the Google Li- about six years. lisher’s Web site and online shops like brary Project of any copyrighted works.” Amazon, where users can buy the book. (The Authors Guild filed its lawsuit ast month, at the New York Pub- “We are helping the publishers reach around the same time.) The publishers, lic Library, Google hosted a con- consumers that otherwise might not who have the support of the Association ferenceL on the future of the publish- have known about their books and help- of American Publishers, are suffering ing industry. About four hundred peo- ing them market their books by giving from a version of the problem that John ple—mainly publishing executives and limited but relevant previews of the Kerry had in the last Presidential cam- agents—attended, most of them grimly books,” Jim Gerber, Google’s director of paign: they are for Google Book Search aware of the simultaneous lethargy and content partnerships, told me.