Google has rarely included scanned documents in its search results because it had no way to determine the nature of the content, but that’s about to change. The search engine giant says it will use optical character recognition (OCR) software to make it possible for Web surfers to search any Web-hosted document stored in the PDF file format developed by Adobe Systems.
Google is using the technology to convert scanned documents into equivalent text files that can be searched, indexed and returned as responses to Google search queries, noted Evin Levey, a Google product manager.
“This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world’s information accessible and useful,” Levey said.
A Boon for Books
The company’s brute-force application of OCR technology to the Web is also expected to aid Google Book Search — the ambitious and controversial book-scanning project that the search engine giant first unveiled at the 2004 Frankfurt Book Fair. Ever since, Google has been scanning the book collections at the world’s major libraries at a rate of 3,000 book titles per day.
Though the project initially raised copyright concerns, Google has just concluded an agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers under which Google will be able to expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the United States. The agreement resolves lawsuits that had challenged Google’s plan to digitize, search and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner.
Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond says the agreement is truly groundbreaking because it will give readers online access to millions of in-copyright books for the very first time.
“Second, it will create a new market for authors and publishers to sell…