On this blog, I've long spruiked Google's rightful claims to eventual web domination, highlighting that no competitors are showing a way to sincerely dent the California company's impressive bottom line.

But now, Google has a new type of competitor. One that is less direct. But one that is directly capable of affecting any business' bottom line.

The competitor I refer to is the courts!

Google publishes plenty of content in its search engine without 'permission'. And although in most cases this content is in the shape of page titles and meta descriptions which could lead searchers to your website, in some cases, this content is proprietary stuff that Google is being legally challenged for.

The product causing most controversy at the moment is Google Books.

Google Books allows searchers to preview a good number of scanned (digitised) pages of books from many publishers. On the left column, there are links to online booksellers where readers can click through to in order to purchase the actual book.

Publishers from all around the world are up in arms about this tactic, which they see as a threat to their traditional way of marketing and selling books. So they are, continent-by-continent, taking Google to court.

A recent report suggests Google has agreed to pay A$125million to European publishers, and agreed to seek permission before digitising and publishing previews of European publishers in the future.

While the amount is nothing huge for a company of Google's stature, it cannot be in the interest of any company of innovators to be dogged by legal question-marks constantly hanging over its head.

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