Google's most recent service, Google Print, has been temporarily suspended until November. The aim of Google Print is to make the world's books accessible to internet users with full-text search. Books would be scanned from public libraries and other sources. Many of the intended books are either hard to locate, or lacked a digital copy for searching. In a post made on the Google Blog, Adam Smith, Google Print product manager, said:
"We think most publishers and authors will choose to participate in the publisher program in order introduce their work to countless readers around the world. But we know that not everyone agrees, and we want to do our best to respect their views too. So now, any and all copyright holders – both Google Print partners and non-partners – can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won't scan any in-copyright books from now until this November."
Google's plans to scan the world's libraries have come under criticism from groups worried about an increasingly Anglo-Saxon / Western world outlook online. The French government announced earlier this year plans to launch a similar service offering different content. In other news, Google, in response to a recent announcement from Yahoo, revised the number of items listed in its image search. Google claim they now index 2,187,212,422 images, an increase of .8 billion.
View: Google Blog
