Publishers Confirm DOJ Google Probe

However, Allan Adler, the AAP's vice president of Legal and Governmental Affairs, stressed that the DOJ's involvement does not necessarily mean that there are grave anti-trust issues at stake.

"We've been contacted by the DOJ and they want us to visit with them to discuss the preliminary agreement with Google," Adler said. "All of the parties involved have been in touch with the DOJ. It's much too soon to guess how serious DOJ's concerns are at this point."

The DOJ declined to comment.

The Authors Guild, the AAP, and several authors and publishing houses sued Google in September 2005, alleging copyright infringement by the company regarding its Google Library Project and sought damages and injunctive relief.

After three years of legal wrangling, in October 2008, both sides agreed to a preliminary settlement to avoid a trial case, according to court documents.

Google was released from alleged liability and in return, Google agreed to fund publishing programs.

On Wednesday, Adam Smith, director of product management, Google Book Search wrote a blog post explaining how the Google Book Search settlement will expand the public's access to books by being able to find out of print and otherwise hard to find books.

"When you find the book you're searching for, you'll be able to preview 20 percent of the book over the Internet from anywhere in the U.S.," Smith wrote. "If you want to look at the whole thing, you'll be able to go down to your public library where there will be a computer station with access to the whole book for free."

The Authors Guild, the AAP, and several authors and publishing houses sued Google in September 2005, alleging copyright infringement by the company regarding its Google Library Project and sought damages and injunctive relief.

After three years of legal wrangling, in October 2008, both sides agreed to a preliminary settlement to avoid a trial case, according to court documents.

Google was released from alleged liability and in return, Google agreed to fund publishing programs.

Part of the proposed settlement included funding a book registry that would give exposure of books to a wide audience via Google.

"This [proposed Google settlement] creates an innovative marketing program for authors and publishers of in-print books that catapults the publishing industry into the digital age, a result that greatly benefits individual authors and publishing houses, which simply could not launch such a program on their own," the publishers said in court documents.