The Battle for the Books: the latest from GigaOM Books
We’re excited to announce the latest release from GigaOM Books, the ebook imprint that we created earlier this year. The Battle for the Books: Inside Google’s Gambit to Create the World’s Biggest Library details the development of the ambitious and contentious Google Books project. Written by Jeff John Roberts, one of GigaOM’s top media and legal reporters, The Battle for the Books is the first effort to chronicle Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s Google Books project, an ambitious plan to scan the world’s entire stock of books in five years. Roberts tracks the birth of the project as well as the ensuing legal and academic battles that eventually led to the project’s demise.
Roberts has been following the Google Books saga for more than three years. The narrative he weaves throughout The Battle for the Books combines his background as an intellectual property and media lawyer with his experience as a reporter and storyteller. It’s a compelling account told through the eyes of the people involved, and it contains exclusive accounts from dozens of figures in the tech, academic, and legal sectors, including:
- Terry Winograd, Stanford professor emeritus and Larry Page’s graduate advisor
- Robert Darnton, the director of the Harvard Library, who led an intellectual crusade against the project and exposed a rift between some librarians and Google
- Robert Miller, the director of Books at the Internet Archive, which launched a book-scanning project of its own and joined a growing number of onetime Google allies in a legal and public relations campaign against the company
Click here to lean more about The Battle for the Books, to check out a preview, and to order this ebook for delivery straight to the digital reader of your choice.
