Google made a settlement with author groups in the U.S. that allowed it to continue scanning books and make them available online. Regulators in Europe are now eyeing the Google scanning program while Google defends itself by saying that the scanning of books makes finding information online a more democratic process.

The big fear from libraries in the U.S. and abroad is that the digital service offered by Google will quickly become a necessity that will be very expensive. Others fear that Google is setting up a monopoly that will last for a long time as the only company who can scan out of date works of literature.

Google's Dan Clancy said, "We have seen a democratization of access to online information." He continued saying, "You can discover information which you did not know was there. It is important that these (out-of-print) books are not left behind. Google's interest was in helping people to find the books."

Europe has its own online book registrant reports Reuters called Europeana that has scanned works ranging from Shakespeare to pictures of famous personalities from Europe. The catch is that many European nations have been slow to scan works for the online service. EU commissioner Viviane Reding hopes that Google would be able to take up some of the slack for the Europeana service. Reding and fellow commissioner Charlie McCreevy says that they will consider shaking up copyright laws if needed to get works online.

Some authors are now advocating for Google to be able to scan their works. One author who originally sued Google over its scanning practice, James Gerick, said, "The settlement mostly only affects out-of-print books. For us who are authors of out-of-print books, it brings our work to a whole new audience."

In the U.S. the FTC is concerned that Google may make unauthorized use of personal information collected by users of the service to serve ads. The FTC issued a letter to Google asking that it draft a privacy policy for data use.