Paul Sakuma / AP

For Google to believe that it should have free, unrestricted and uncompensated access to copyrighted material has always shown me the heights of hubris at this company.

It's good for you, Google would say, gently patting the heads of The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and millions of writers who watched their hard work digitally co-opted in the name of progress.

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[GOOG  Loading...      ()   ] made a compelling argument: the more people with access to a book, the more revenue authors and publishers stood to gain. While that might be true, it wasn't Google's decision to make. And the company's opt-out policy—instead of asking permission, we're just gonna do it unless you tell us not to—was icing on the cake.

When Google started digitizing entire libraries at a time, ludicrous reached an entirely new level.

It would seem that Google has finally come to its senses, and both sides in this two-year dispute, which cuts to the core of Google's business and how it displays search results, will be the winners.

That's because writers are indeed seeing the writing on the wall: their world is going digital in the same way music and movies did before them. Look no further than last week's Oprah Winfrey show where Oprah herself, the driving force behind turbo-charging the publishing industry with her Book Club, proclaimed Amazon.com's electronic book reader "Kindle" as her most favorite thing. Ever! Jeff Bezos sat in the audience, beaming, having just announced in the company's third quarter earnings that 185,000 titles are now available for the device.

The Google settlement comes at a key time for the company, and represents a huge win for rights holders, authors, and other intellectual property owners. You have to wonder whether the company's long-running feud with Viacom

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[VIA  Loading...      ()   ]over YouTube is on the settlement list next. Its recent agreement with CBS might be a hint of more cooperation to come between Google and the rest of the entertainment world. Guys, there's lots of money to be made here, but it takes cooperation. That it has taken Google this long to realize that is kind of stunning.

Paul Aikin, executive director of the Author's Guild, called this the "biggest book deal ever" on this morning's conference call. He said that his group had a fundamental disagreement with Google, and "probably always would."

For its part, Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said on the conference call that Google was built on making the world's information more accessible. He didn't say it, but I would offer: A noble goal that carries a price tag.

Google will pay a staggering $125 million to settle this case. Staggering for publishers, chump change for Google. But it's a start. It's a clear victory for writers and publishers, and should serve as a wake-up call to Google that even though a company is built on new technology, it still sometimes has to play by the old rules.

• Google Rewrites History With Publishers
• Authors, publishers settle suit against Google

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