shimenawa - Latest comments on Advertising Google Book Search

In response to: Advertising Google Book Search

Eric Rumsey [Visitor] — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:52:16 +0000

Unfortunately, Orwant has asked O'Reilly/TOC to take slides down, so they aren't on their site. But we still have some of them at http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/02/23/jon-orwant-on-google-book-search-at-toc-slides-with-data/#comment-579

In response to: Advertising Google Book Search

Eric Rumsey [Visitor] — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:29:41 +0000

Here are slides from Jon Orwant's talk at TOC, with some numbers:
http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/02/23/jon-orwant-on-google-book-search-at-toc-slides-with-data/

In response to: Advertising Google Book Search

peter brantley [Visitor] — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:39:17 +0000

Jonathan, that was Dan Clancy, the senior engineer for Google Book Search.

Eric, Jon did give numbers. I suspect that he will not be formally sharing his slides; you can try to search on twitter using the tag #toc and looking for Jon's name, or Google, or GBS. However, I've also asked Dan and Jon directly if they were willing to share these stats. I'll post those here, or on a new post, whatever is most appropriate.

In response to: Advertising Google Book Search

Eric Rumsey [Visitor] — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:00:12 +0000

"Google has analyzed the traffic through its Google Book Search site; it is rather phenomenal, as Dan Clancy of Google revealed at the last DLF Forum, and as Jon Orwant of Google discussed in more detail at ToC. Basically, every book in GBS gets viewed, and viewed a lot. ..."

Did Orwant give any numbers on GBS traffic? As far as I can find, the only hint of numeric data is in Clancy's brief mention of it in NYT article that I discussed - http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardinmd/2009/02/06/google-books-and-the-long-tail/

In response to: Advertising Google Book Search

Jonathan Rochkind [Visitor] — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:13:37 +0000

So you may remember the guy whose name I forgot, but very smart and well-spoken, who represented GBS at the last DLF forum.

He actually made the point that revenue from actually selling content (rather than advertising) was a new thing for Google, and something they were doing because it seemed to be the only way to reach a settlement that made sense, not something they were doing because they actually were originally interested in it. He made the point in the context of saying it might take Google a while to work out some kinks, since it wasn't a business model they were used to.

Of course, this is just my possible faulty recollection of a possibly mis-interpreted statement. :)

But I can easily believe that Google didn't move toward this model because they actually _wanted_ to sell content, but simply because they wanted to have the content, but since the rightsholders didn't want them giving the content away for free, the only way they could provide the content was to sell it, and if they were selling it, it only made sense to take a % cut (rather than provide a distribution/sales service completely for free to rightsholders).

Makes sense to me, actually.

It still may very well result in Google having a monopoly on the sales of certain content, which is troubling.

In response to: Advertising Google Book Search

MikeShatzkin [Visitor] — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:51:56 +0000

I "know" nothing, but my hunch about why the licensing and sale is your point number 1: publishers insisted on it.(And why would Google object? While it may be true that Google will have great difficulty recapturing its investment in book digitization through advertising, that is STILL the business they are in and are dedicated to.

Publishers, on the other hand, have already learned that the ad revenue from their books is not particularly robust and they all think of a "sell the content" model: they're used to it and there are many who think things are changing toward it (look at all the recent advice to the NY Times to start charging for web content.)

It seems likely that it will take a long time for Google to aggregate a lot of CURRENT content for sale through their channel. What BRR is really about is liberating orphan works, which it will do to everybody's benefit. There are already robust operations across publishing digitally licensing current content; those are revenue streams that will be protected for quite some time. That will keep the most licensable content away from the Google sales effort.