Google has recently gotten in the news via the social media web sites, interest groups, and bloggers discussing the new Google Books feature. Basically, Google is scheduled by 2010, to provide a service in which users will be able to get books online (between five to six million at least, according to some reports).
In early July of this year, the U.S. Department of Justice said that they would be conducting a formal investigation with the search engine giant to see if they would be able to get a settlement between Google and book publishers. The issue at hand that Google is faced with is over digital publishing rights and antitrust concerns, according to a news release by CNET. This article also provides the letter from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding this investigation on Google. Now, it looks like the U.S. Congress will be taking a look into this case as well, according to an article that was posted on Mashable.
There are many issues with this particular case involving Google that is related to what we study and handle in Public Relations. First, there is the overall purpose and goal of Google that has to be addressed. Why is a search engine like Google interested in entering the online book industry? Well, the answer is that many of the main players in this line of business like Amazon are against it.
Plus, Google is also being targeted by their other search engine competitors in this campaign as well – Microsoft (with their new search engine Bing) and Yahoo. Microsoft made a statement that the Google Books is an “illegal joint venture” and listed other concerns that they had regarding this situation in an article that was published by ZDNet.
So – Google has a lot of heavy hitters in handling this crisis. Not only do they have to deal with these large and iconic corporations, but also the numerous interest groups, authors, and publishers that will not be pleased with these latest developments.
The main issue that all of these key stakeholders are concerned about is that Google is turning into not only a monopoly among search engines, but a multi-dimensional monopoly in numerous industries. Besides trying to get into the online book business, Google was also in the news today to establishing a relationship with the Newspaper Association of America to create Google Micropayments – a service in which people would have to pay for online content. Their key message is that they are creating this new service for the global community to “save newspapers.”
So as you an see – Google is branching out and trying to be a monopoly and have a key presence in various industries – and their competitors, interest groups, and many other stakeholders are not too pleased with this situation. It will be interesting to see how this case develops.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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