Google recently launched a beta version of Google Video. I had a look at it, searching through the offerings for something I was interested in. There was more than I expected. And I mean much more, including some copyright video offerings, including (at least) The End of Suburbia, a commercial documentary sold as a video or a DVD, over the web and in video stores. Copyright is important. It stops the outright theft of creativity and ensures that investment continues to flow into movie-making, music-making, art, design and a multitude of creative enterprises. Yet Google appears not to have checked the copyright status of any of these movie offerings. Instead, it chose an arrogant system of "backlash", where copyright holders were forced to write or contact Google with their demand for Google to "cease and desist" in broadcasting their work illegally.

Is it illegal? You bet your sweet bippy! Way illegal. They may think they're too big to sue, but that has worked out to be incorrect. As this article in the UK Independent points out; "And that's not all: Google faces a batch of lawsuits from companies that once benefited from its search engine and which were then consumed by it. It also faces suits from the US government. There are disputes over breaches of copyright, trademark infringement and invasion of privacy. Some of Google's aggressive gambits into new businesses have brought angry responses from incumbents, such as Microsoft and Apple, many of which are now allying to stop the steamroller in its tracks. In media-land last week it was Stop Google time, as newspaper groups began talking seriously about locking their content away from Google's 'spiders', which raid their sites many times a day, 'stealing' their copy to sell on to someone else".

Even I was affected. I was forced to pull the "Ian's Power Backgrounds" website last year, because the Google "Images" service had increased my bandwidth costs dramatically, and stopped people from visiting the website, because they could get all the high resolution images they wanted straight from Google. What I was once happy to give away free, I was particularly unhappy to give to Google to give away free. While people were visiting my website there was the chance that they might purchase our CD-ROM, letting me get back some returns from giving away the images free. Google destroyed that idea, and I do not thank them for doing so.

Google recently cut a deal with the Chinese government, to willingly censor its searches in line with Chinese political propoganda, filtering out most anti-government rhetoric, articles on Tibet, and much more. Talk about slimy - this ranks up there with Halliburton selling Iraq oil services through an offshore company and the Australian Wheat Board paying kickbacks to the Hussein regime through a middleman. Google may gets what it wants in China, which is access to the world's fastest growing market for its advertisers, but it has lost a great deal of respect in doing so.

Google Book search (originally called Google Print) has also put writers and publishers offside. And why wouldn't it? Just like Google Video, the idea is to scan, then publish copyright novels (in searchable form) on the internet. Law suits from the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers followed, but as of November 2005, Google continued to copy library books. In my opinion, this is simply theft, by a greedy, unscrupulous corporation, willing to compromise the arts for its own financial interests. Just as Microsoft "borrowed" some of the technology from its earlier operating system from Apple and third party developers, banking on the fact that it could win any long-term legal case. so too does Google abuse the market.