Germany to do its own version of Google Print

Google is in copyright troubles with their Google Print program. Yahoo! has started their own but with non-copyrighted content available around the world. However, Germany based publishers have their own plans. The country is very defensive about their copyright issues and to prevent something like Google Print to happen with their libraries and content, they have decided to set up their own web-based database allowing readers to browse, borrow, or buy books.

Experts believe that Google’s Print program can handle them the monopoly over this booming market and take the competitive spirit. As a result, the German literature association wants to build its own search engine to offer services, which could rival those offered by Google, Yahoo, or Lycos. In fact, they aim to offer to their users books on lending similar to services offered by libraries around the world.

Matthias Ulmer, who is leading the project, spoke about their plans: “We don’t want Google to hold the texts in its servers; we want the publishers to keep them.” Their aim is to build the first nation wide database of books relevant to German literature. And in fact, this model can be replicated by other countries to prevent copyright breach by a single entity.

Under this program, the German publishers would scan their own copyrighted content. The publishers’ association would then enable the third party entities to search that database for user search queries. They aim to deal with the market leaders Google but with the condition that the content would not be displayed to users who are searching for the relevant keywords.