Google has launched its books scan engine "Google Print" in eight European countries (local-language sites): Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Spain. "Google Print" enables users to look for scanned books from libraries on the internet.

Google presented its controversial digital library service at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The move comes ahead of steps by the European commission and EU member states who plan to set up their own European digital library, under strong pressure from France that fears Anglo-American cultural domination. The project has attracted opposition from the publishing industry and from authors, and a copyright infringement lawsuit has been filed by the Authors Guild in the USA. The Association of American Publishers has just announced that it has also filed a lawsuit against Google. (JURIST has more on this).

Meanwhile Yahoo has announced a book-scanning project of its own, but only with works in the public domain.