Authors, Publishers Settle Suit Against Google

It took three years of posturing and wrangling about the dollars, but the copyright battle between Google and the publishing industry has ended. Publishers and authors had brought the suit against Google in an attempt to control the amount of out-of-print, but still copyright-protected material the search giant could legally use. Google had argued that exposure on search engines would be a windfall of exposure and possible sales for books that had fallen off sales charts. But publicity doesn’t pay the rent — and the writers filed the suit, which ended with Google paying for material and promising a split of ad revenues. Meanwhile the publishers will allow greater access and expanded volume of text results that can be used for Google searches. Money talks.