About what an “open” standard is: we’ve had this discussion many times on both the ebook-community mailing list, and here on TeleRead. PDF (particularly PDF/A) is by any reasonable non-legalistic judgement an open standard, while still being, as you note, proprietary. Most of the standards groups listed on openstandards.net seem to me to be less effectively open with their standards and processes than Adobe is with theirs.

About GBS not being an ebook: clearly it’s not. Yes, they are also selling ebooks on their site, but that doesn’t make GBS an ebook.

About our best interests: buy some Google stock. It’s a publicly traded company. Then they’ll be working in your best interests.

By open formats I am referring to open standards such as those proposed by the Open Reader Consortium (http://www.openreader.org/) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (http://www.idpf.org/ocf/ocf1.0/). HTML is a web standard particularly suited to that environment and not an ebook standard, and PDF is a proprietary format. I believe open standards are essential to ensure the longterm acceptance, growth and success of ALL digital technologies – and I’m not alone – http://www.openstandards.net/ is a good a place to start as any if you want to read more about this.

I’m glad you agree with me about Google’s online access programme being functionally very similar to ebook provision. I hope this means you understand my unease with their bald and repeated statement that “GBS is not an ebook.” I certainly agree – whatever our respective positions on other issues – that such technology is the wave of the future.

@Jon – I don’t think they’re being ripped off, and this isn’t my concern. My only concern is that literature, its practice and consumption, remains in the hands of those who have its and our own best interests at heart. Please don’t take that to mean – necessarily – publishers, or that I believe Google does not.

It’s quite possible for Google Web Search to direct me to a Web page that I am then not allowed to read, or have to pay to read. That doesn’t often happen because most websites are keen to make themselves as widely available as possible. If publishers begin to take the same attitude to their books then I don’t see any downside there; if not then, as Bill points out, they can hold on to them just as tightly as they want.

Huh? Certainly they are free for others to scan and index. Yes, obtaining the various permissions is part of the scanning process, and I’m sure that, given the various circumstances fate has seen fit to endow us with, Google has some advantages in this regard over at least some other individuals and corporations. But this, much as we may sometimes regret it, is simply a fact of existence in a non-deterministic world. My point remains: Google Book Search is like Google Web Search.

By the way, I’ve read your full article, and still don’t understand the sentence-paragraph beginning “Of course, publishers have every right…” What exactly is “worth bearing in mind”? Why does an “open” format (PDF doesn’t qualify? HTML doesn’t qualify?) have anything to do with it?

You are right to call the versions of the books that Google now selling access to “ebooks”. I’ve written a bit about this form of ebooks, and the associated DRM. I think it ’s the wave of the future.

Thank you for the constructive comments on my prose style. I will take them under advisement. Unfortunately, I don’t write for a living – Oh that I did.

You make a fair comment that everyone else is free to read these books too. However, when discussing copyright materials, it is not the case that they are freee for others to scan and index – these require legal permissions which Google is obtaining from publishers – who have a limited grasp of the technologies involved – by persuading them that Google essentially represents the openness and free access of the internet ideal.

This is even more concerniong when it comes to the difference between ebooks and their ‘online access’ programme – but please read my full article and comment there if you wish to engage with this further.

Right, coffee…

It stores a cached copy, but the actual data remains out there on the web, freely available to others, to read, or index for themselves. This isn’t the case with Google Book Search.

Huh? Google scans a book, then puts it back where it got it, freely available to others to read, or scan for themselves. Exactly like Google Web Search.

Mr. Bridle needs some coffee, I think. Or perhaps a course in
logic.