Fact & Fiction

Fiction: Google Books lets you download any book in the world for free.

Fact: Google Books helps you search within and discover books, not download or read books without paying for them. So when you find a book that's still under copyright, you'll see only a small portion of the book at a time–either the Snippet View or the Sample Pages View–plus links to places where you can buy or borrow it. If you find a book that's out of copyright, however, we're able to display the Full Book View. (You can read more about public domain books in Google Books here.)

Fiction: You say you're only showing small "fair use" snippets of books under copyright, but I see whole pages, so you must be infringing copyright.


Fiction: If a book is still under copyright, scanning it without permission is illegal.



Fiction: Ordinary people are entitled to fair use protections, but a company that sells advertising isn't.

Fact: The fair use provisions in copyright law protect companies the same way they protect people. The New York Times Company, for instance, relies on fair use when it publishes excerpts from books in book reviews surrounded by ads, and TV programs like "The Daily Show" use "fair use" clips from other programs.

Fiction: This project would be okay except that Google isn't letting authors and publishers choose whether or not their books appear in Google Books.



Fiction: Google is paid by booksellers like Amazon to include links on Google Books pages.


Fiction: Google is freeloading off people's books by making money from ads on Google Books pages and not sharing it with the copyright holders.

Fact: Google Books provides tremendous benefit to authors and publishers at significant cost to Google, the opposite of freeloading. We don't place ads on a specific book result unless the copyright holder has given us permission to display portions of the book and wants to show ads. When we do show ads, the majority of the revenue is given back to the copyright holder. In other words, we profit from Google Books ads only to the extent that our publishing partners do as well.