Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo! Join Together To Take on Google Books

Google can’t seem to stay out of the news these days. After the fiasco with Apple and Google Voice, Google is being challenged in a different area of their business, online digital books, by tech giants Yahoo!, Microsoft and Amazon. But why are Microsoft and Yahoo! so concerned, online books don’t affect them much, if at all?

If you weren’t aware, Google cut a $125 million book settlement with publishers and authors to provide scanned copies of library and textbooks to create an online archive. Part of the deal also included Google giving a percentage of the ad sales revenue to Author’s Guild and Association of American publishers. An anti-trust lawsuit took place led by former big shot lawyer Gary Reback, who prosecuted Microsoft in one of their anti-trust cases. But now, the three tech giants also want to stop Google from going forward with the online digital books archive, each with their own motive.

For Amazon, it’s clear, Google could potentially be a threat to their core ebook business. Right now, Google is not offering newly published content nor does Amazon care about library archives, but in the long run, should Amazon ever look to expand their ebook business, they might hit a snag if Google has control over digital archives. Of course Amazon feels like they’ve been doing things the legal way with their online ebook store and the Kindle, so it does make sense for them to go against Google in this anti-trust case.

Yahoo! and Microsoft, on the other hand a bit of a mystery. They don’t sell ebooks, like Amazon does, they don’t offer online books, so what’s their motive to go against Amazon? Only one answer comes to mind: the search engine. Microsoft and Yahoo! joined forces a few weeks ago to compete against Google in the search engine department and if Google wins the rights to digital archives, Google will have an advantage in collecting user data for ad revenues. The searches and data would easily give Google an advantage that Yahoo! and Microsoft can’t compete with.

So we wait and see what happens with this case. One thing is for sure, it’s a different ball game now with Amazon, Yahoo! and Microsoft all jumping in against Google. Will Google give in? Most of these companies rarely do, so expect Google to put up a legal battle and possibly win.

(Via Wall Street Journal)