Eoin Purcell's Blog

Google announced on it official blog yesterday that:

WBG, a German publisher, today decided to drop its petition for a preliminary injunction against the Google Books Library Project. WBG (whose legal action was supported by the German Publishers Association as an industry model) made the decision after being told by the Copyright Chamber of the Regional Court of Hamburg that its petition was unlikely to succeed.

The news is good for ordinary consumers and not as important for Google as it may seem. For the consumer it means that Google Book Search will become more effective over time as its right to display snippets seems to be now legally justified. Google Book Search has the edge in terms of search even if others have snazzier readers on hand. This change will not improve its offering to a great extent but perhaps it will free up resources within Google to concentrate on improving the overall product.
Businesses though, if they have any sense, will see this as spur to move ahead with their own projects to create digital databases of their own books, either singly or as part of a collective.