COPYCENSE

“After a year on line and a tremendous amount of media coverage, the company changed ‘Google Print’ to Google Book Search.

“What gives? Well, it was increasingly clear that Google had a major branding problem on its hands. I had told a Google lawyer that as much a few weeks back after a debate we had in Washington, DC. Despite — or more likely because of — hundreds of journalists taking an interest in the project to scan millions of books, the problem was not getting any better.

“Over the past few months I have done dozens of radio, television, and print interviews about this project. With rare exceptions (Salon.com’s brilliant Farhad Manjoo among the exceptions) reporters tended to conflate the portion of the project called ‘Google Print Library’ with the larger umbrella project, ‘Google Print.’ The problem was, of course, that ‘Google Print’ also included another sub-project, the authorized and licensed content then called ‘Google Print Publisher.'”

Sivacracy.net. On the ‘Google Print Book Search Publisher Partner Library Project Program’: How We Know Google Is Not Like Other Companies. Nov. 22, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.