10 October 2007

Frankfurt (dpa) - German publishers stepped up Wednesday their battle to tame the Google Books search engine, launching a search machine of their own, but a leading US publishing executive suggested at the Frankfurt Book Fair that the grudge match might soon be over.

Accustomed to tough copyright laws, the German book industry accuses US-based Google of "stealing" books when it indexes their complete text so as to tell Google users which book contains a wanted word or phrase.

US publishers and authors began legal action two years against Google, but those cases are reportedly still at a preliminary stage.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Peter Olson, New York-based chief executive of the world's biggest book publishing group, Random House, said, "I think we are close to resolving our issues. We have so much in common."

Olson, speaking in a discussion between top industry executives on the first day of the fair, said he would like to see a deal between Google and publishers to charge internet users small sums to see single pages of books online.

A "pay-per-page" model would make allow internet users who might not want to buy a complete cookbook to download a single page of recipes for a much smaller price. Giving a share to the book industry would mollify the publishers.

"I think it makes sense for both sides," said Olson.

Ruediger Salat, a board executive at Holtzbrinck, the top German-based book publisher, disagreed, saying Google might evolve into a partner to publishers, but at the moment was still "more an enemy."

Under a policy known as "opt out," Google, which is funded by online advertising, says it deletes any books from its search engine if requested to do so by the copyright owners.

"Opt out is not the right way," said Salat, whose group has been a key backer of Libreka, the German publishers' book-search engine launched in Frankfurt Wednesday as a "public preview.

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