Google Books errors may indicate large changes

[Ben Zimmer]

I reported this to a contact at Google Books, who says: "The engineers
are tracking it down. It's definitely not related to the settlement or
anything legal or policy related; just a bug."

--bgz


On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 7:23 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
>
> While searching the Google Books database in recent days I have
> encountered a large number of 404 errors. Here is a sample error
> message:
>
> 404. That’s an error.
> The requested URL << long URL name excised by me >> was not found on
> this server. That’s all we know.
>
> For example, a single search produced links with the following names.
> All these links led to 404 errors, i.e., dead ends.
>
> EEI bulletin - Volume 27 - Page 213
> The Journal of the Florida Medical Association - Volume 47, Part 2 - Page
> 922
> Protection - Volumes 81-82 - Page 213
> Typo graphic - Page 85
> St. Thomas's Hospital gazette - Volume 53 - Page 89
> Telephone engineer and management - Volume 57 - Page 55
>
> Google is either reorganizing their database index or removing a large
> number of periodicals. This might be a manifestation of the
> undisclosed provisions of the agreement between Google and publishers.
>
> Garson
>
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      GoogleBooks settlement
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > More at the link:
> >
> > http://goo.gl/AHrpP
> > The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google officially laid
> > down their arms on Thursday, ending a seven-year legal war with a peace
> > agreement that both parties plan to keep sealed from the public and the
> > courts.
> > The AAP first sued Google in fall 2005, a year after it announced Google
> > Book Search (also known as Google Books), a project the company had
> > jump-started by scanning hundreds of thousands of books from the shelves
> > of university libraries without seeking permission from the publishers
> > or the authors. The publishers and authors teamed up to file a class
> > action against Google and, after years of negotiating, agreed on a
> > settlement -- only to have a judge reject it last year.
> > Thursday’s agreement does not involve the Authors Guild, which is now
> > engaged in separate litigation with Google, nor does it require court
> > approval or public disclosure.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org