•Inform Microsoft that unless any “alternative transaction” can (ensure) a $33 or higher stock price, all talks of alternative transactions are over; and

Yahoo’s current leadership, meanwhile, says that Icahn is distracting it from its work.

Icahn on Thursday filed his preliminary proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, outlining the backgrounds of his proposed director slate and encouraging shareholders to use his gold ballots to vote in the upcoming shareholder meeting. Yahoo sent a letter yesterday urging shareholders to vote for its proposed slate on its white ballots.

•Offer publicly to sell Yahoo to Microsoft in a friendly and cooperative transaction.

•Eliminate the Change In Control Severance Plan;

•Hire a talented and experienced CEO to replace Jerry Yang and return Jerry to his role as “Chief Yahoo”;

Icahn says he would propose to (and I’m quoting directly here):

In his proxy, which was well timed to coincide with Yahoo’s reorganization, Icahn outlines some of the steps he would propose to the new board, if it is elected.

“It is time for Yahoo to turn its undivided attention to implementing its key strategies, and we therefore urge you to reject Mr. Icahn’s slate and his ill-defined agenda,” Yahoo said in its letter, which also made the case for its deal with Google. Yahoo is also gearing up for a road show with its investors.

Proxy fights often leave shareholders feeling black and blue, but when it comes to the battle of Carl Icahn and Jerry Yang, it’s a case of gold vs. white.

Keep it simple: Word files with complex graphics, nested tables, fancy fonts and formatting, and OLE Objects belong in Word and Word only. OOo Writer uses public-domain fonts primarily, and many of the fonts in Word are proprietary. If you know you’ll be moving files between the word processors regularly, use only common fonts, such as Arial, Helvetica, and Times Roman. Keep in mind, however, that fonts may share the same name and still be incompatible (Garamond is an example). You can import proprietary fonts to OOo Writer, but make sure you have licenses for them.

Choose Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP under 'Always save as' in OpenOffice.org Writer's default file format options.

Wednesday: Give viewers control of your PowerPoint slide show.

To make Word’s .doc file format the default in OOo Writer, click General under Load/Save, choose Text document as the Document type under Default file format in the right window, and choose Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP in the drop-down menu under Always save as.

Tweak OOo Writer to work with Word: Open Writer and click File > New > Text Document. Select Tools > Options, double-click Load/Save in the left pane, and choose
Microsoft Office. Make sure all the options in the right window are checked. Now click VBA Properties and ensure that all these options are checked (they should be by default). OpenOffice.org apps don’t support macros and other VBA scripts, but they will preserve them so that the files will retain them when they’re reopened in the original Office program.

To ensure smooth file transfers between OpenOffice.org Writer and Microsoft Word, select these options in Writer's Compatibility settings.

Next, double-click OpenOffice.org Writer in the left pane, choose Compatibility, and check these options:
Use printer metrics for document formatting
Add spacing between paragraphs and tables (in current document)
Add paragraph and table spacing at tops of pages (in current document)
Do not add leading (extra space) between lines of text
Add paragraph and table spacing at bottom of table cells
Consider wrapping style when positioning objects
Expand word space on lines with manual line breaks in justified paragraphs

Here are a few other formatting inconsistencies to keep in mind:
Many of Writer’s advanced features aren’t supported in Word, such as page breaks and custom hyphenation. The last line of Writer’s justified paragraphs could generate line or page breaks in Word. Writer files that use Outline Numbering may not save as Word docs, and nested tables in Writer documents don’t convert to Word. Writer retains Word’s character and paragraph styles fairly well, but graphics aligned in Word as characters don’t convert to Writer.

Select these options in OpenOffice.org Writer to preserve Word features the open-source word processor doesn't support.

The first few times I worked on Word files in the OpenOffice.org Writer program, I was satisfied if the documents opened at all. That’s a long way from being able to trust the open-source app with a Word file from your boss that you need to work on and return with all functions and formatting intact. These steps won’t guarantee trouble-free file transfers between Word and OOo Writer, but they’ll help you prevent some of the most common conversion glitches.

Finally, click Use as Default > Yes > OK to use these settings in all new documents.

If a Word font isn’t installed in OOo Writer, the program will substitute one of its own fonts, which can mess up your document’s formatting. If you have to preserve the appearance of a file you’re going to share, consider saving it as a PDF. This makes it more difficult for the recipient to work on it, of course.

Google and Microsoft, however, both posted double-digit increases in Web search queries. Google posted a 33 percent year-over-year increase in April, while Microsoft’s MSN climbed 22 percent, compared with the previous year.

In sizing up Yahoo, the Stanford Group stated: “Overall, there was nothing to get excited about for Yahoo…Queries also fell on a year-over-year basis, down 3 percent, suggesting that any initial year boost from Panama (has) tapered off as the company continues to struggle to maintain share in the market place.”

And on the click-through rate, which takes the total number of searches divided by the sponsored clicks, Google’s rate fell slightly in April to 10.5 percent, compared with 10.9 percent in the previous month. Yahoo posted a 12.5 percent click-through rate for April, verses 13.2 percent a month earlier. Microsoft, however, noticed a slight increase to 10.3 percent in April, compared with 10.2 percent, in the previous month.

Google’s U.S. paid click-through rate posted a strong performance in the month of April, while Yahoo and Microsoft gave up ground, according to figures released late Wednesday by ComScore.

Meanwhile, Google’s coverage rate, which takes into account the percentage of search pages delivered with at least one paid ad on them, fell to 44.1 percent in April, compared with 45.5 percent in March.

The coverage rate for Yahoo also fell in April to 69.4 percent from 70 percent in March, while Microsoft’s MSN dropped to 63.8 percent in April from 65.5 percent.

Yahoo, meanwhile, saw a year-over-year decline of 4 percent and Microsoft’s MSN saw a drop of 9 percent.

“With fewer advertisements and more paid clicks, it appears that Google’s advertising relevancy initiative is beginning to work,” analysts Clay and Fred Moran of the Stanford Group stated in their research report.

Google’s paid click-through rate climbed 20 percent in April, compared with year ago figures, marking its best performance since November, according to a research note by Ben Schachter, a UBS analyst.

Google’s relevancy initiative aims to reduce the number of advertisements that appear on the right side of its search results, yet make the advertisements that it does carry target the desired audience with greater accuracy. As a result, Google hopes to charge a higher cost per click.

3. Audi R8 V12 TDI concept

I’m hoping for good karma for Henrik Fisker, best known for his designs of the Aston Martin DB9, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, and BMW Z8. The Great Dane is launching his first car built from the ground up, powered by plug-in hybrid technology. The drivetrain, developed by Quantum Technologies, consists of a small gasoline engine that turns a generator to charge a lithium-ion battery pack. The batteries power the electric motor and turn the rear wheels. With a zero-to-60 time of less than 6 seconds and a top speed of more than 125 miles per hour, the Karma is definitely poised to be a Tesla-killer.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

5. Mazda Furai concept

The uber-performance version of Cadillac’s sportiest model is slated to hit dealerships at the end of this year. Its 6.2 liter supercharged LSA engine delivers an estimated 550 horsepower and 550 pound-feet of torque. It also features Magnetic Ride Control, an “industry-first Performance Traction Management program” (although I’m not quite sure what that means), as well as a new automatic transmission with paddle-shift control (some of us recognized the extra space for the paddles on the steering column when we drove the 2008 CTS earlier this year).

There was no shortage of sexy, sporty
cars at this year’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Here are my favorites (in somewhat of a particular order):

Audi’s sleek supercar gets an update with a 12-cylinder diesel engine — a first for a high-performance road car. The V12 TDI (which stands for turbo diesel injection), generates 500 horsepower and an impressive 738 pound-feet of torque. The V12 TDI is closely related to the engine in the Audi R10, the two-time Le Mans winner. I love how the car looks, but I’m still befuddled by that giant strip of carbon fiber down the side.

(Credit:
General Motors)

4. 2009 Cadillac CTS-V

My number one car (though a tough call) evokes images of Tim Allen doing his manly grunt on Home Improvement. The 2009 Corvette ZR1 is the most powerful and fastest production car ever made by parent company General Motors. It features a new, supercharged 6.2-liter LS9 V-8 engine that cranks out a jaw-dropping 620 horsepower and about 595 pound-feet of torque. GM says the ZR1 will be the first production Corvette to achieve a top speed of at least 200 miles per hour. But those speed junkies and midlife crisis victims still need to hang on a big longer — the ZR1 won’t arrive until this summer.

(Credit:
General Motors)

1. 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1

The race-bred concept, which means “wind” in Japanese, is based on the Courage C65 chassis, which Mazda used in the American Le Mans Series two seasons previously. It has a three-rotor rotary engine that’s capable of churning out 450 horsepower. And while it looks awesome, I’d say the chance that it goes into production is pretty slim.

(Credit:
Fisker Automotive)

2. Fisker Karma

Microsoft, from the get-go, however, did not involve Simpson Thacher for any antitrust representation in its Yahoo bid, according to a report in Lawyer.com.

Full coverage
Microsoft’s big bid for Yahoo Click here for the latest on the software giant’s attempt to buy the Net pioneer.

Yahoo reportedly is in talks with AOL, News Corp., and others about them coming in as a white knight to outbid Microsoft.

However, the conflict centered on the “timing of a clearance” and the client declining to issue a waiver to Simpson Thacher to continue representing Microsoft, the source said. And because Microsoft’s bid was unsolicited, the issue of a potential conflict could not be addressed beforehand, the source noted.

There are a lot of moving parts in Microsoft’s unsolicited buyout bid for Yahoo. One of the latest arose last week when the software giant switched its legal team back to its old standby, Sullivan & Cromwell, from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, which dropped out as legal adviser due to a conflict with another client.

A spokesman for Simpson Thacher declined to comment beyond Ruegger’s statement and declined to disclose the name of the client in conflict.

It’s tempting to start connecting the dots, but one source familiar with the change said the conflict in question had nothing to do with Simpson’s client AOL LCC, which the law firm advised on the Goowy Media acquisition. That deal closed on January 30, two days before Simpson’s client, Microsoft, announced its unsolicited bid for Yahoo.

“We hold Microsoft and its team in the highest regard,” Pete Ruegger, Simpson’s chairman, said in a statement. “However, in order for us to fulfill our ethical obligations to each of our clients, it became necessary for us to withdraw from this representation.”

Lonchakov will have logged 178 days in space on this flight for a total time of 201 days over three missions. Simonyi’s total will be 13 days in space for this flight for a total of 27 including his first station visit in 2007.

Even so, Anderson expressed optimism that additional seats will open up occasionally, and he said the company is pressing ahead with plans for privately funded Soyuz missions, starting in 2012, that would include a Russian commander and two tourists per mission.

The mission had been scheduled to conclude with a touchdown on April 7 northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, but the landing zone has been moved to a backup site about 180 miles to the southeast, where conditions may be more favorable. Touchdown now is targeted for 3:15 a.m. EDT on April 8.

“There is a possibility that one of Space Adventures’ clients could launch on Soyuz TMA-16, which is currently scheduled for launch this September 30,” Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures, told reporters Friday. “We have learned from Roskosmos (the Russian space agency) that the third seat aboard Soyuz TMA-16 may not, in fact, be used by the cosmonaut from Kazakhstan, and if that seat is not used…Roskosmos is considering both the possibility of another spaceflight participant opportunity for Space Adventures or using the seat for a professional Russian cosmonaut.”

Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft, foreground, with Progress supply ship in background.

If all goes well, Fincke, Lonchakov, and Simonyi will say farewell to Padalka, Barratt, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata the evening of April 7, sealing hatches between the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft and the downward-facing port of the Russian Zarya module around 8:45 p.m.

With a handshake, Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke, right, transfers command to Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka. Crew, from left to right: Charles Simonyi, Michael Barratt, Padalka, Yury Lonchakov, Fincke, Koichi Wakata.

During a change-of-command ceremony Thursday, Fincke formally handed the station over to Padalka, saying “all systems are in order, and Yury and I can now take a little bit of a rest and get ready, along with Charles, to come back to the planet.”

But plans to boost the station’s crew size from three to six in late May could mean a hiatus in tourist flights, at least in the near term. While one seat on a Soyuz flight scheduled for launch this fall apparently has opened up, it’s not yet clear whether the Russians will fill the slot with a professional cosmonaut or allow Space Adventures to book one of its clients who has gone through training as a backup.

Simonyi’s visit was arranged through Space Adventures, a Vienna, Virginia-based company that has brokered seven space tourist flights using available seats on Russian Soyuz capsules, beginning in 2001 with U.S. businessman Dennis Tito.

Fincke and Lonchakov were launched to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft October 12. Their replacements–Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt, a NASA physician-astronaut–were launched March 26 aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft. They were joined by Simonyi, a Hungarian-born U.S. software developer making his second privately funded trip to the space station.

Esther Dyson, a respected high-tech journalist, entrepreneur, and Space Adventures investor, trained as Simonyi’s backup and attended his launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But it’s not clear whether she could fly on such short notice or whether she could complete required training in time. There are no other known clients who are thought to have a realistic shot at the September flight.

(Credit:
NASA TV)

(Credit:
NASA TV)

“Thank you very much, my best friend,” Padalka replied. “Expedition 19 is very happy to get (the) space station in great operational condition…We’re ready to work on behalf of all our space agencies and..all human beings.”

But it’s not yet known whether the Russians can build enough Soyuz capsules and rockets to support expanded space station operations as well as tourist flights. Between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of its replacement in 2015, the Soyuz flight rate will have to double to support six-person crew operations aboard the space station.

Tito’s ticket reportedly cost $20 million. The price has since gone up to about $35 million, according to Simonyi. In a prelaunch telephone interview with CBS News, Simonyi said the future of commercial spaceflight is “certainly not my concern.” But, he added, “my feeling is (that) the commercial pressures will be toward resolving this and (having) more flights.”

Assuming an on-time landing, Fincke will have logged 178 days in space, pushing his total time through two space station expeditions to 366 days, third on the list of most experienced U.S. astronauts behind Peggy Whitson (377 days) and Mike Foale (374 days).

“I am aware of the questions that have been raised regarding the ability of the Russian space industry to supply an increased number of Soyuz missions,” Anderson said. “Building rockets is a complicated business; it’s certainly challenging, but…I’m confident (that) by 2012, for example, the prospect of adding a fifth Soyuz is something that is reasonable.”

“The price is going up,” Simonyi said. “Future seats that NASA has bought are even more expensive. This has to be put into perspective because other means of getting to space are even more expensive. So this one is actually quite cost-effective at the current state of technology.”

Undocking is planned for 11:55 p.m., with a 22-second deorbit rocket firing expected at 2:24 a.m. on April 8. The three modules making up the Soyuz spacecraft will separate just before atmospheric entry at 2:52 a.m., and the central crew module carrying Fincke, Lonchakov, and Simonyi will descend to a parachute-and-rocket-assisted touchdown at 3:15 a.m.

But tickets to space, assuming that the seats are available, will be increasingly expensive.

Even at the current list price, Simonyi said, the experience of flying in space is worth it for those who can afford the cost.

One company worth checking out if you’re heading to the show is
Redwood City-based MokaFive. They
specialize in mobile desktop virtualization – meaning, you can both
virtualize your desktop and take it on the road with you, loaded onto
an
iPod or USB stick.

According to Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Product Management at
MokaFive, LivePCs work online or offline – you don’t need a constant
network connection, and your data is automatically backed up to the
cloud. “No one is chained to their desktop these days. You shouldn’t
be chained to your virtualized desktop either,” she said. The
user can even remotely destroy their virtual desktop if the device is
lost.

For all you
iPhone junkies, MokaFive will be moving onto mobile phones
soon, and is offering a free software prototype, called iPhone
Sentinel, allowing a portion of the flash storage on an iPhone to
essentially function as a removable drive for Windows and
Mac OS
users.

The company has plans to introduce additional smartphone
prototypes in the future. For now, you can download the iPhone
Sentinel here.

As virtualization fanatics gear up for VMworld this week in Las Vegas,
desktop virtualization will no doubt be among the hottest topics. In
the last few months, everyone seems to want a piece of the pie -Sun,
HP, Dell, Microsoft are jumping in as desktop virtualization brings in
a new technical variable to the quietly reigniting war for desktop
domination. Red Hat bought Qumranet this past week for $107 million
and immediately
went after VMWare.

(Credit:
Rubicon Consulting)

What’s the most popular data function on the so-called “Jesus phone”? Reading e-mail. Respondents also said that their monthly mobile phone bill had increased by an average of 24 percent, or $228 a year.

• The
iPhone is expanding the smartphone market. About 50 percent of iPhones replaced conventional mobile phones, 40 percent replaced smartphones, and 10 percent
replaced nothing. Among conventional phones, Motorola Razr was the phone
most often replaced. Among smartphones, Windows Mobile and RIM Blackberry
were most often replaced.

Also among the findings, writes Rubicon:

(Credit:
Rubicon Consulting)

Improved browsing is almost certainly on the way too, said Rubicon. About 40 percent said the iPhone “has trouble displaying some Web pages.” Without good browsing, smartphone companies run the risk of being overlooked by mobile carriers and users alike, the firm said.

About 43 percent “strongly supported” Apple making at least one major change to the device, whether it is changing its size or adding a keyboard, for example. Rubicon said that there must be people out there who haven’t bought an iPhone yet because they’d like to see such changes. (Check out Larry Dignan’s post over at CNET News.com sister site ZDNet for some colorful bar and pie charts.)

On a lighter note, I’d suggest there’s one important feature that the iPhone is missing but, fingers crossed, will show up on the 3G version expected later this year: “when moved from hand to ear, makes Lightsaber sound effects.” I’m sure George Lucas and Steve Jobs could work something out.

About half of them are under 30 years old, 15 percent of them are students, and they now have bigger mobile phone bills. Who are they?

• A quarter of iPhone users say it’s displacing a notebook computer. 28 percent of iPhone users surveyed said strongly that they often carry their iPhone instead of a
notebook computer.

On that last point, Rubicon said it wonders whether third-party software will make the device “an even more attractive notebook replacement.”

• A third of iPhone users carry a second phone. There have been anecdotal
reports of iPhone users carrying a second mobile phone, either for basic voice
calling, or for other functions like composing e-mail. The survey confirmed those
reports.

(Credit:
Rubicon Consulting)

“It has been for some time generally held that CMOS technology in image sensors will overtake CCD at some point. I would say that three or four years ago, the predictions were that by the time 2007 or 2008 rolled around, CMOS would be done replacing CCD,” Weir said. “History has shown those predictions were premature.”

Canon builds its own CMOS sensor. Shown here is a silicon wafer with high-end "full-frame" image sensors

Pentax's K20D, the company's new top-end camera, is the first SLR from the company to employ a CMOS sensor.

Deep within every digital camera is a sensor chip whose job it is to capture light. Most camera sensors today use CCD (charge-coupled device) technology, but a newer approach called CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) is catching on, particularly at the high end of the market.

(Credit:
Canon)

CMOS’s reputation in digital imaging has suffered from inflated expectations.

Where CCD still has the edge
“One problem with CMOS is it’s difficult to get the manufacturing process optimized both for the imaging part and the processing part,” DeLuca said. In contrast, “CCD technology was built for imaging. The architecture was set up to optimize the imaging characteristics available on the silicon.”

“Because it’s a standardized process, with high-volume production, the pricing is very competitive. It’s better than CCD and getting better,” Mosleh said. Kodak, a digital imaging pioneer, builds its own CCD sensors and and more recently started designing CMOS sensors to be built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. and IBM, so it’s relatively neutral in the debate over which technology is superior.

CCD sensors are still widely used, though, in part because many more years of work have been invested into milking the most out of the process, said Mike DeLuca, Kodak’s CCD market manager for professional and applied imaging.

Phase One, which uses Kodak CCD sensors, agrees. “For the 50- to 80-megapixel sensors on the horizon, we still feel the CCD will be the best way forward,” said PhaseOne Chief Executive Henrik Hakonsson. “We are carefully monitoring CMOS all the time, but for the customers we working for we have not found the quality we’re looking for.”

Because that conversion happens earlier in the image-handling pipeline, before image data is transferred off the sensor, there’s less opportunity other camera electronics to sully the image with noise. In digital photography, noise takes the form of colored speckles, and it’s a major bane, especially when shooting in dim conditions.

CMOS advantages can include lower noise, lower power consumption, lower price, and faster response times. In the prestigious and fast-growing digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera market, Canon and Olympus have used CMOS sensors for years, but high-profile new arrivals on the CMOS bandwagon include Sony, Pentax, Samsung, and most notably Nikon.

Pentax makes the move to CMOS
John Carlson, Pentax’ product manager for imaging systems, is outspoken on the CMOS advantages for SLRs. “Lower power is the key thing,” he said; it enables more shots per battery, smaller batteries, or more energy for image-processing tasks. Pentax buys its K20D’s CMOS sensor from Samsung.

In this rarefied atmosphere, where camera equipment costs tens of thousands of dollars, CCD still rules the roost. In part that’s because a camera doesn’t need to shoot at high speeds, and in part because consuming a lot of battery power isn’t a top-level problem.

But in the long run, Weir still gives CMOS the edge. “Are there long-term advantage suggest that transition will take place? Probably.”

In compact cameras, CCD still dominates. Where CMOS has caught on most widely is videocameras, mobile phone cameras, and notably, SLR cameras. In this latter category new CMOS-based cameras include Nikon’s D3 and D300, Sony’s Alpha A700, and Pentax’s K20D, and Samsung’s GX20, which is derived from Pentax’s K20D. All these cameras top the companies’ respective lines, and the Pentax and Samsung cameras are being shown off here at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.

CMOS also sensors can power a live view of the scene on the camera’s LCD, a feature that’s universal in compact cameras but still a relative novelty among SLRs. CCDs get too hot and consume too much power for live view on the large sensors used in SLRs, Carlson said.

CMOS itself has been around for decades–it’s the method used to manufacture the vast majority of computer processors–but its use as an image sensor rather than an information processor is a relatively new development. In recent years it’s begun making inroads against CCD, a technology with many more years of refinement in image sensor technology.

CCD today leads CMOS when it comes to performance and a wider bright-to-dark range, said Fas Mosleh, CMOS market segment manager for professional and applied imaging at Eastman Kodak, but because CMOS sensors can ride the coattails of the rest of the chipmaking business, CMOS outdoes CCD in one very important domain: price.

Kodak has begun selling a 5-megapixel CMOS sensor–and the company’s camera division is the first customer, using the chip in the low-end $99 Easyshare C513. But the company also has a business selling some of the biggest image sensors around: 39-megapixel CCDs used by medium-format camera companies such as Hasselblad and Phase One. These measure a whopping 48×36mm, twice the surface area of a full frame of 35mm film (though not as large as medium-format film).

“For those customers, the first, second, and third priority is the image quality the sensor provides,” DeLuca said.

LAS VEGAS–You may not know it from the outside, but digital cameras are getting something like an eye transplant.

Sony, like Canon, builds its own CMOS sensors. Using CMOS means that some processing can be done on the sensor chip, including the conversion of analog information produced by the light being photographed into digital signals. Sony’s 12-megapixel A700 sensor has more than 4,000 analog-to-digital converters, said Mark Weir, Sony’s technical prod manager for digital cameras.

Google Book Search can show the content of books as well as links of places to buy it and advertisements.

Google, seeing lemons in the form of the Authors Guild’s a class-action lawsuit, ended up with lemonade in the settlement. Class-action settlements apply to a class of potential plaintiffs, and in the case of Google Book Search, those with rights to books must opt out of the settlement if they don’t want to be a party to it. That means essentially that Google would be permitted to show content from in-copyright, out-of-print books and sell online copies of those books even without an explicit agreement with the books’ rightsholders.

“Under the actual law, it is Google’s burden and not yours to ask you for permission and then fairly negotiate terms of contract acceptable to you personally, not jam some monstrosity down your throat,” said Lynn Chu, a literary agent with Writers’ Reps who also called the proposed settlement a “ripoff for authors” in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Another organization that raised objections is the Internet Archive, which operates the Wayback Machine to catalog snapshots of the Web in earlier days and offers out-of-copyright books online.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard estimates this latter category accounts for 70 percent of Google Book Search books, and it’s a key factor for so-called orphan works–books or other materials whose authors can’t be located. The settlement would grant Google rights to use those works, but competitors–Microsoft, Amazon, or the Internet Archive are all real possibilities–without their own handy class-action settlement would be have to try to seek such permission in advance from each rightsholder or risk copyright infringement litigation.

“The settlement creates a fundamental change in the digital world by consolidating power in the hands of one company,” Harvard professor and author Robert Darnton concluded in a New York Review of Books opinion.

Who else but Google?
Before siding with opponents or supporters of the agreement, try stepping back to look at the big picture. Chu asserts that scanning is neither rocket science nor expensive. But is it that true when viewed at the scale of all books published?

“If the settlement were approved, it would be really difficult for the Internet Archive to work with the same group of books–those with no known rightsholders,” said Peter Brantley, an Internet Archive director. If it tried to offering orphaned works online, “we could be faced with significant claims of infringement out of the blue.”

Authors might be afraid to give some content away for free online that they’re accustomed to charging for, but showing more can help sales, Google said, basing its judgment on data from book-search results involving content from the more than 10,000 publishers and authors that participate in the current program that can be used to show specified portions of a book.

AIG and General Motors apparently are too big to fail. But the way the opposition to Google Book Search is shaping up, it looks like some believe Google is too big to succeed.

“If anything, it’s a positive,” he said. “If over time the Book Rights Registry locates authors of out-of-print books, it winnows down to a small number the number of books that have been difficult to find. And it can assist competitors of Google to reach licensing arrangements,” by facilitating contact with authors. And Google putting books online well help locate the “parents” of orphan works. “As Google digitizes books, information about the books will become more and more known. It will be easier and easier to locate the rightsholders of these books,” he said.

“The project will be immensely good for society, and the proposed deal is a fair one for Google, for authors, and for publishers. The public interest demands, however, that the settlement be modified first,” said New York Law School’s James Grimmelman. “It creates two new entities–the Books Rights Registry Leviathan and the Google Book Search Behemoth–with dangerously concentrated power over the publishing industry. Left unchecked, they could trample on consumers in any number of ways.”

“The agreement as structured in a way to encourage competition. It’s nonexclusive,” Google’s Stricker said. “The charter of Book Rights Registry explicitly says the registry will be able to work with other third parties to represent rightsholders who come forward.”

After revealing the book-search project in 2003, Google drew copyright infringement lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005, but an October 2008 proposed settlement, now under review by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, has converted those groups from adversaries to allies.

Access to these orphan works is the first thing Google could get beyond its original book-search project. The second is the ability to show more material than just snippets, which means that Google users get much more useful search results and that much more of a scanned book might be shown online.

But the idea of being a cog in the Google machine doesn’t sit well with some–including the fact that authors must figure out whether they want to participate in the settlement and the Book Rights Registry.

When Google began its project, it showed only short “snippets” of text from books it had scanned, just as it does today with excerpts from Web sites it shows in search results. The company argues that such snippets may be shown under the “fair use” provision of copyright law that use of copyrighted information under some circumstances without licensing it first.

The settlement, if approved, could neatly cut a Gordian knot of copyright entanglements though setting Google back $125 million. That’s because it would enable Google not only to display books that are out of copyright and those that are in print by cooperating publishers, as it does today, but also those from the vast collection of in-copyright brooks that are out of print–even when those holding rights to those books didn’t specifically agree to Google’s plan.

Then, too, think of the consequences of Google controlling the content of the world’s books. Do you want the act of browsing the library to leave fingerprints in a server log, to become a transaction whose details can be revealed through a subpoena? Google has the best search engine, the most complete online maps, the most popular video site, and it wants to house your e-mail, spreadsheets, blogs, photos, and health data. Do you want Google to keep the keys to the world’s library as well?

Though search is Google’s primary business, the company also stands to make money directly from book search. Under the proposed settlement, Google could share revenue with authors and publishers from sales of PDF copies of books, from fees from institutional subscriptions granting access to its online library, and from advertising.

Nobody in recent years has accused Google of lacking ambition, but its Google Book Search project is certainly among the company’s top projects when it comes to chutzpah. That’s not just because of the technical and financial hurdles of scanning, indexing, and displaying online millions of books, it’s also because of the tangled intellectual property and legal concerns involved in the controversial project.

And Mike Boni, attorney for the author’s subclass, points out that participating in the Book Rights Registry or Google Book Search doesn’t preclude an author from other licensing moves. In fact, thinks the registry could help other online book efforts.

“What I think the judge needs to think about is whether we think the Authors’ Guild would on its own grant a similar license to competitors to Google. If answer is no, and there is good reason to think they would say no, this license will by its terms create monopoly power,” Picker said. “There is a chance this is the only orphan-works license that will created. No one else like the Internet Archive would be in a position to compete with Google with respect to the orphan works.”

Google has patented technology to scan books that can correct for the 3D shape of a page. It’s scanned millions of books already. It has technology to search those books fast and to show those books online. It has a functioning business model that can subsidize the expense, and a will to actually take on the monumental challenge.

Google has patented technology for scanning books.

Google, the company best equipped and most motivated to digitize the world’s books, wants to offer the world an online Library of Alexandria. The decisions of the Justice Department, authors, book publishers, a federal judge, and Google itself likely will determine whether the company actually does.

Instead, Brantley would prefer to see the issue addressed through legislation that could define what a digital library, for example, had to do in trying to locate an author before being able to use an orphaned work. Such legislation also could set up a mechanism similar to the Book Rights Registry that could hold money in escrow for later distribution to rightsholders once they’re located.

Nonetheless, even supporters have qualms.

Settlement resistance
What’s not to like for authors? Google Book Search gives them a way to sell books that are out of print, which today for them make money only for used booksellers. And through other provisions, students and other researchers would get access to vast online libraries at institutions that pay for subscriptions, and the public would get a Google-funded computer with free access to the same in every U.S. library.

The complicated proposed settlement invoked the wrath of some authors concerned it would grant Google monopolistic power over online publishing, and the court extended the deadline for authors to choose whether to opt out of the settlement from May to September. Then the other shoe dropped this month: the Justice Department signaled serious antitrust scrutiny by issuing subpoena-like civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to check into the matter.

The physical incarnation of books have a solidity that the fleeting, impermanent Internet can’t match, but making books available online gives them new life by exposing them to people who might not have found them otherwise–even if they happened to be near a library that held that book and saw its title in a card catalog. Google has the most powerful engine today to help people discover exactly what’s in those books, and it has the servers, storage, and network capacity to deliver that information to the world. It even has increasingly sophisticated translation technology that could bulldoze literary language barriers, and digitization could make countless books more easily available to blind people.

Randal Picker, a University of Chicago Law School professor who’s scrutinized the books project, believes that the rights that Google alone gets through the class-action suit are pertinent.

Google keeps 37 percent of revenue from online book sales, advertising, and subscriptions; the not-for-profit registry would take a portion of the remainder for operating costs and distribute the rest to the rights holders. Although Google has an algorithm to set pricing for book downloads, rights holders can set prices through the registry if they want to override Google’s decision.

“We’ve always said that the perfect ‘I’m feeling lucky’ experience is when we get that answer right for you every single time. Maybe it comes from a Web page, maybe from a video, sometimes from a book,” spokesman Gabriel Stricker said. “Our ability to have the most comprehensive search engine improves our ability to deliver on core search, which is the core of our business and one that’s proven itself to be really profitable.”

Why doesn’t Google just scrap it?
Google Book Search isn’t just another Google project. It’s a link from Google’s current Internet-based view of humanity’s collective knowledge to the broad and deep information contained in the world’s books. If the company succeeds in its ambition, the world’s books will emerge from dusty library stacks to be reborn on the Web, and Google already has a 7-million book start.

Monopoly power?
The Justice Department’s scrutiny is a new wrinkle for the settlement. It’s lost on no one that the Justice Department torpedoed a Google-Yahoo search-ad partnership last year by threatening a lawsuit. But Google argues Google Book Search isn’t anticompetitive.

How does the proposed settlement work?
It took months to hammer out the proposed settlement, which runs to 320 pages including 15 appendices. Among its key features is the establishment of a Book Rights Registry, run by authors and publishers to keep track of who owns rights to which books and to collect money from Google’s online sale of those books, either through individual use or through institutional subscriptions. For orphaned works, the registry would keep money from online sales for later distribution to rightsholders that turn up later.

The book-search lawsuits challenged whether such use was permissible. But by the time the proposed settlement arrived, though, Google got much more for its $125 million.

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U.S. PTO)

“The best way of doing this is not through the court creating a private monopoly through a commercial actor, it’s crafting legislation through Congress,” Brantley said. That idea is within the realm of possibility: orphaned-works legislation made significant headway through Congress before faltering last year.

The beauty of Google’s approach is that it picks winners in search results based on the collective judgment of humans on the Internet rather than its own assessment of the content’s quality. Adding data from books to search opens up a new pool of data, potentially leading to relevant search results for more search queries.

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” the company tells us. And conveniently, the company has found a way to make money presenting that information: sell ads next to search results based on the search terms people type in. To foster business growth and to meet rising expectations, Google must collect more data on its servers and improve the algorithm that selects search results from that data.

Concerns about the settlement and its complexity led the judge to extend the opt-out deadline by four months to September 4, giving rightsholders more time to considering whether they really wanted to join the settlement agreement and giving Google more time to conduct its worldwide campaign to try to inform as many authors as possible of the proposed settlement–an important activity since the company must convince the court it fulfilled its obligations to inform members of the class of their involvement in the suit.

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Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

“Our data show really conclusively a direct correlation between the more pages people view and the likelihood people click ‘buy the book,’” Stricker said, referring to present arrangements with in-copyright, in-print books, for which Google Book Search offers purchasing links.

“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility to digitize every book ever been printed. That’s a boldness the national libraries had not imagined was in the realm of reach. We all owe Google credit for saying, ‘Go for it.’ That is a huge benefit to global society–to digitize the information that humans over hundreds of years have garnered into these things we call books. That has benefited everyone,” Brantley said. “What doesn’t benefit us that…Google alone will be able to provide access to that information in ways that cause us deep concern for privacy, pricing, and innovation.”

Indeed, who else but Google has the capability to transport centuries of accumulated text into the digital future? Microsoft dropped its book-scanning project, and Amazon appears more interested in commercial transactions. The Internet Archive has hundreds of thousands of books available, but it doesn’t operate on Google’s scale, and the nonprofit group hasn’t pushed hard enough to try to break the copyright logjam the way Google has.