The last few months were probably long and hard ones for members of the Google Books team; it had started to seem like the whole world objected to their proposed scanning and sharing settlement. But it turns out that Stanford is on Google’s side, as a new deal was announced this afternoon.
Stanford and Google first sealed a book-related deal in late 2004. In fact, Stanford was one of five organizations that, on December 14th of 2004, joined what was then known as an expansion of the Google Print program.
Now, a post on the Google Public Policy Blog has stated, "Stanford University . . . has expanded our original partnership to take advantage of our settlement agreement to make millions of works from its library collection accessible to readers, researchers, and book lovers across the United States."
The post continued, "That means that if the settlement agreement is approved by the court, anyone in the US will be able to find, preview and buy online access to books from Stanford’s library."
So obviously, this could be a significant agreement. We’ll just need to find out how the settlement agreement fares before we can be sure that the terms will stick.
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Reactions to Google’s announcement about a possible withdrawal from China have been mixed so far; there have been objections from individuals who think its absence will deprive the Chinese people of information, while others approve of what they consider a moral stand. But Baidu’s investors probably aren’t too conflicted, as the company’s stock imitated a bottle rocket today.
Today, Baidu’s stock gained 52.99 points, which works out to 13.71 percent. That’s the sort of improvement many investors would be happy to see take place over a full year, especially considering how the recession has lowered expectations.
Baidu’s stock didn’t soar in accordance with any sort of market trend, either. The Nasdaq rose just 1.12 percent today, and the Dow gained an even less impressive 0.50 percent. So this is just a matter of many people realizing that Baidu would perform better than ever in a Google-less China.
Google’s stock, meanwhile, was less fortunate, sinking 0.57 percent today. Although we should note that multiple factors could have influenced both developments. (One more side note: the numbers in the graph are off because it covers a slightly different timeframe.)
Anyway, it should be interesting to see how these stocks continue to fluctuate as the Google China drama plays out. One way or another, it’s likely that a lot more money will change hands before the end.
Related Articles:
> Some Interesting Points About The Google China Situation
> Google May Quit China
> Google Bows To Chinese Authors On Book-Scanning
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