Google Incorporated was reported to have been scheduled to pay $125 million in order to settle two copyright lawsuits, one with book publishers and another with authors, which have arisen from the search giant’s book-scanning project. The latter aims at making millions of books available for online reading and for printing also.

With the lawsuits settled, there is no other bump in Google’s road towards allowing online readers to search and print numerous books, in whole or page-by-page, according to their needs and interests concerning the writings. Moreover, users will be able to purchase copyrighted and out-of-print books (also in whole or page-by-page) and libraries all across the United States will be granted access, free of any charge, to Google Books’ database.

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.

Nevertheless, only one year later, the Author's Guild, Pearson Plc's Penguin unit, McGraw-Hill Companies, John Wiley & Sons Incorporated and CBS Corporation's Simon & Schuster subsidiary joined together and filed legal charges against Google, claiming that the latter's project violated their copyrights.

The deal Google has clinched with both publishers and authors on Tuesday, which was deemed by Google co- founder Sergey Brin as having been a historic one, now has to be approved by a judge in a Manhattan federal court.

Sergey Brin said the deal furthered Google's mission to organize the world's information. "Today, together with the authors, publishers and libraries, we have been able to make a great leap in this endeavor," said Brin.

"While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips."

And afterwards, online readers can wave a much expected farewell to the three or four lines of text from a book that a Google search generates and say hello to entire pages or, where the ones with deeper pockets and a craving for creations of the written art are concerned, even to the whole book they searched for.

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.

Moreover, court papers read that authors and publishers have the last say with regards to their copyrighted works being added to Google Books via the company’s scanning program.

According to the deal, Google will get to keep 37 percent of revenue from online book sales and for advertisements displayed next to previews of the pages that the project offers readers, while the other 73 percent is set to go to copyright holders, after the Book Registry collects its administrative fee.

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.

Both lawsuits that have been recently settled had been filed at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

"This historic settlement is a win for everyone," said Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers.

"From our perspective, the agreement creates an innovative framework for the use of copyrighted material in a rapidly digitizing world, serves readers by enabling broader access to a huge trove of hard-to-find books, and benefits the publishing community by establishing an attractive commercial model that offers both control and choice to the rights holder."

"It's hard work writing a book, and even harder work getting paid for it," said Roy Blount, president of the Authors Guild. "As a reader and researcher, I'll be delighted to stop by my local library to browse the stacks of some of the world's great libraries."

"As an author, well, we appreciate payment when people use our work. This deal makes good sense."