Internet search leader Google said yesterday it is making concessions to European publishers to try and soothe worries over its Google Books project, which aims to put hard-to-find books online.
Google's digital library has raised hackles among rivals such as Microsoft, yahoo and Amazon and raised fears among European copyright holders that their exclusive rights could be eroded.
Google spokesman Bill Echikson said the company would take these concerns on board and would appoint two European representative for authors and one for publishers. He also said that Google would do more the check that English-language editions of books originally published in a European language weren't wrongly listed as out-of-print in the United States. Publishers feared that adding such books to the Google library would lose them sales.
The European Commission yesterday held a hearing to examine the effect of Google's 10-month settlement with US authors and publishers on copyright holders in the EU. Unlike the US deal, Google is only right European books over 150 years of age to avoid infringing copyrighted material.
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