Google’s Book Search to Include Magazines

Jason Fell – Foliomag.com

12/10/2008

After settling a $125 million lawsuit with book publishers this fall over its digital Book Search project, Google has expanded the initiative to include magazines, too.

On a blog post Tuesday, the mega search engine said it already has digitized millions of magazine articles from several major publishers and will make them available on its Google Book Search service. The goal, Google says, is to help bring more archived and new magazine content online and searchable.

Some publishers already on board include New York magazine, Ebony and Hearst’s Popular Mechanics. According to Popular Mechanics editor-in-chief James Meigs, Google’s magazine digitization program "will allow us to bring thousands of archived articles to the online world and open our readers to innovations, ideas and how-tos from the past.”

Now, Book Search users will find magazine results mixed in with links to books—magazine links have are differentiated with the keyword “magazine” attached. As Google grows its archive of magazine articles, more links will also become available in standard Google.com search results.

Google is monetizing the initiative, in part, by running text advertisements alongside the magazine articles. Google says it will split revenues with publishers and will link back to publishers’ Web sites.

“For years, we've worked to make as much information as possible accessible online, whether that information comes from books, newspapers, or images,” the blog post says. “We think that bringing more magazines online is one more important step toward our long-standing goal of providing access to all the world's information.”