Google and Microsoft are at war in terms of building the best online library on the web first. Neither company will reveal how many books they have scanned as of December 7, 2006. There are many court cases pending on issues that pertain to copyrighted books. It is easy for Google and Microsoft to scan books that are out of copyright, but the problem lies with the United States editors. In response to the opposition, many publishers created the xOCA, which stands for the Open Content Alliance, in October 2005. "The OCA is a non-profit organization which joins together an array of universities, foundations, and data processors to create a 'common pot' of digitized books available online for download or printing" (para. 20). Yahoo joined the alliance and financed creating a search engine for them and financed the scanning of 18,000 books. Microsoft has promised to contribute 150,000 scanned books to their collection.
Microsoft recently released a US beta version of their "Live Search Books" at http://books.live.com. A Microsoft spokesman stated that "Live Search Books is advancing the way people search online by digitizing and indexing information from the world's printed materials... There is a lot of trusted and authoritative content that can only be found in books today. We want to make that content accessible to people who are using Live Search" (para. 3). The library currently has only out-of-copyright books in its collection at this time.
"Microsoft has book-scanning partnerships with New York Public Library and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine... the University of California system, and the University of Toronto" (para. 9). Google also has a partnership with New York Public Library and other major universities. Google's collection has out-of-copyright books as well as copyrighted works that were added with or without the publisher's consent. Microsoft states that they have created Live Search Books "with copyright laws in mind." Google says that "freedom of quotation" gives them the ability to draw search results of books and has limited its content to just summaries of copyrighted works that do not have consent. The initial Google Book Search project began in 2004, and was just recently restarted it "with the aim of scanning every literary work into digital format and making them available online" (para. 20) Google and Microsoft are at battle for the potential advertisers looking to reach those who would use the online libraries.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061207/tc_afp/afplifestyleinternet