Apparently Google has gotten fed up over the failure of the settlement talks in the copyright lawsuits over Google Books, because it has begun to move toward actually litigating the case. An article in TechWorld notes Google has notified Judge Denny Chin that it plans to file a motion to ask that parts of the 2005 copyright infringement lawsuit and a related 2010 lawsuit be dismissed. [Judge Chin] set a deadline of Dec. 23 for Google to file the dismissal motions. The plaintiffs will have until Jan. 23 to respond to the motions, and Google...

From the Inside Google Books Blog: Starting today, you’ll also be able to break out the colored highlighters and pens with Google eBooks in the Web Reader. To start adding notes, first open your web browser and find your Google eBooks in yourMy eBooks bookshelf (make sure you are signed into your account at the top right hand corner of your screen). If you don’t have any ebooks yet, you can start your collection with a free classic from Best of the Free bookshelf, or purchase an ebook from oureBookstore. Then, click on the book to open it in the Web Reader. You should be...

The article looks at Professor Geoffery Nunberg’s 2009 comments about the poor quality of Google Books metadata and includes new comments by Nunberg about what he sees today. From Times Higher Education: In response to Professor Nunberg’s critique, Google offered to correct any errors that were brought to its attention. But while this process has ironed out specific glitches in the intervening years, Professor Nunberg does not believe it has made a fundamental difference. “The changes are a drop in a greatly enlarged ocean,” he said, adding that the flaws in Google’s metadata remain “a big systematic structural problem”. In the course of his research alone,...

From the Google Books blog (blockquotes omitted): Today, Google eBooks has landed in Australia, and whether you're a bookworm or casual reader, you're invited to stop by and stock up on some great reads for summer. We've got hundreds of thousands of titles to choose from, including plenty of best sellers, and more than two million free eBooks on top of that. It's easy to find great Australian authors like Kate Grenville, Thomas Keneally, Geraldine Brooks and Christos Tsiolkas. Google eBooks is all about choice: we're offering more titles and more ways...

From the Inside Google Books: Starting this week, you can set up a Google Alert for books and receive email notices when new books that match your interests become available. To create an alert for books, go to Google Alerts, type in the keywords you are interested in about a book, (whether it’s title, author name, or topic) and choose “Books” from the Type drop-down button, and create. You can also preview the email you’ll be sent on the right side panel. Once you create the alert, you will automatically begin receiving notification emails about new, recently published books in Google Books. Google’s...

Lest we think that the lawsuit against Google that has been spinning its wheels for six years and gone precisely nowhere was the extent of the Authors Guilds efforts to fight the Google Books scanning projects, the Guild has struck again with a lawsuit against the universities that partnered with Google in the project, and the cooperative organization, HathiTrust, set up to manage those works. The Authors Guild, its counterparts from various Commonwealth countries, and a group of authors have filed suit to block the use of unauthorized scans of copyrighted works from the universities libraries as part...

The Bookseller reports that three French publishers who had previously sued Google over unauthorized digitization of their books as part of its Google Books plan have failed to file the case by a September 6th deadline. The article speculates that they may be on the verge of reaching an agreement with Google similar to the one Hachette Livre entered into last year. A French publishers’ association and authors’ association also filed suit against Google at the same time as Hachette and fellow publisher La Martinère (which also settled) did, and have not said whether they also plan to drop...

That's because in a class action the plaintiffs have to be "representative" of the class they are supposed to represent.  If they are not then the class will not be certified and all the litigation can do is bind those plaintiffs who are actually present in the case. As reported by Publishers Weekly, a recent decision kills the "class" part of the Google Books litigation: A two-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday rejected an $18 million settlement in the long-running class action suit filed by freelance writers following the landmark Tasini case, and in the...

From the Inside Google Books blog (blockquotes omitted): Say you’ve found a hidden gem on auto mechanics for your greasemonkey friends or want to hop down memory lane with Peter Rabbit and your family. Good news for monkeys and rabbits alike: you can now share info about any of the millions of books in our Google Books index worldwide with your circles on Google+. Let’s say you are reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and you’d like your friends to read it with you (or you have a witty comment to let loose). Simply click on the Google+ Share box on the About the Book page...

Nate at The Digital Reader has spent the weekend keeping track of what's happening to ebook apps available through Apple's App Store now that their new guidelines are in effect, and today he discovered that Nook Kids' latest update, released on Friday, removed a link to the Nook ebookstore. In a more extreme case, the Google Books app disappeared entirely last Thursday, with no explanation or info on whether it will return. Among the big retailers, this leaves the standard Nook app, which hasn't been updated since last October, and the Amazon Kindle app, which was last updated in April. Both...

Update 21 July 2011: It appears that Google Books is not going to be the only partner for U.S. ebook sales, but rather one partner among others. Original post follows. A new blog post from Google today says that the company will be handling J.K. Rowling's Pottermore.com ebook sales for U.S. customers, and that Google Checkout will be promoted (worldwide?) as the primary way to pay for things on the site: "Also under this agreement, Google Checkout will be the preferred third party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com. When you visit the Pottermore Shop, you’ll be able to pay...

Shelf Awareness notes that Penguin Group (USA) has been printing up in-store displays to remind shoppers that the store sells ebooks as well, then distributing them to independent bookstores: "So far, 40 have been created, and by the time the publisher is finished, some 200 stores will receive a custom easel." It's too bad Google's ebook buying experience is so convoluted—the last time I tried it, I had to create a store account, link my Google account, provide a credit card (even though I've got one stored already with Google), and click buttons and checkboxes on multiple screens. But at...