Google’s project to scan and digitize books has from now on a new addition: magazines.

The new initiative, announced on Google Official Blog, aims to bring magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles.

But as every road starts with the first step for the moment Google offers articles from magazines such as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony.

The results will be shown along with the regular results of Google Book Search but they will be tagged with the label “Magazine”

Two months ago, Google has settled two copyright lawsuits, one with book publishers and another with authors, which have arisen from the search giant’s book-scanning project.

The company’s book-scanning project was kicked off back in 2004 and includes Harvard University, the New York Public Library and approximately 10,000 publishers.

Google will pay $125 million in order to avoid further legal problems. The settlement entails that $34.5 million of the $125 million be used to create a registry program that would compensate the companies that own the publishing rights for the works, while another $45 million are to be used to compensate authors who have had their books scanned by Google without their previous approval.

Up to this date, Google has scanned about 7 million books, in their attempt to offer Internet users higher-quality Web content, as David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, has stated.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its decision to pull the plug on two of its projects, the Live Search Books and the Live Search Academic.