• The Century Foundation, Tuesday, November 4, 2008 10:15 AM

With all the media layoffs last week, one of the most important items got lost: Google settling a lawsuit brought by book publishers over the digitization of their publications. Google will pay $125 million to the plaintiffs, and a pricing protocol will be established to continue the scanning of books and making them available online.

So why aren't newspapers and magazines going after Google for making their content available for free online via its powerful search engine? After all, Google has just conceded, with a very large payment, that information is not free, and newspapers and magazines are struggling.

This is complicated issue, something the book publisher settlement makes clear (141 pages plus attachments). But the collection of quality news is expensive, and it is seriously threatened. If newspapers and magazine want to continue doing it, they would be wise to address the Google issue.

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