Prometheus 6

My first thought was, "Like AOL, the wall around this garden will either dissolve in chaos that is the Internet, or starve the growth inside the wall." But opening their own search api to external engines and giving greater access to those who search directly from the HarperCollins site, they changed my mind in a few paragraphs.

HarperCollins Will Create a Searchable Digital Library
By EDWARD WYATT

In the latest move in the battle between publishers and search engines, HarperCollins Publishers said yesterday it would create its own digital library of all of its book and audio content and make it searchable by consumers on the Internet. Web users will be able to search the HarperCollins archive via search engines like Google and Yahoo or the specialized programs of retailers like Amazon.com.

The move is intended to allow HarperCollins, a unit of the News Corporation, to maintain control over digital content rather than cede that control to other companies, Jane Friedman, chief executive, said.

Rather than give copies of books to search services like Google for those companies to scan as it currently does, HarperCollins would keep the material on its own computers, and users would be pointed there by the search engine, Ms. Friedman said. The company expects to have at least part of the service operating by the middle of next year.

In the end, the development is not likely to make much difference in what consumers see, said Brian Murray, group president of HarperCollins. Currently, the Google Book Search site returns anywhere from a few lines to a few pages of a particular book's contents, depending on whether the book is under copyright and whether the publisher participates in its program. That's not likely to change.

But, Mr. Murray said, HarperCollins might offer consumers access to more of a book on its own site. HarperCollins, which released its announcement yesterday after it was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, said that all of its publishing companies around the world would participate in the program.

Other large publishers, like Random House Inc., a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, have long been digitizing all of their new content for in-house use, as well as many older books that remain in print.

But the HarperCollins announcement shows that at least one major publisher is seeking ways to work with Google and other Internet companies to make books and other material, like audiobooks, widely searchable.