Slate, Your Search Returned 12 Million Books:
I’ve long called on the publishing industry to negotiate with Google. Now I’m calling on the publishing industry to negotiate with Google’s competitors. Authors and publishers should be forced—either by the court, or through legislation—to grant rival companies like Amazon and Microsoft the same rights that they’re giving Google. Not only would this likely satisfy the government’s antitrust concerns, it would create a truly vibrant market for books. Google didn’t create a great Web search engine because it alone had access to everything published online; it created a great Web search engine because all its rivals had access, too, and Google was forced to think of an entirely new way to approach searching the Web. The story is no different for books: No single company should be given exclusive legal access to the printed word. That would be a disaster for authors. More importantly, it would be a disaster for readers as well.