Magazine search unlikely say Google

Google has damped down speculation that it will extend its Google Book Search platform to include magazines with an ISSN number. Technical difficulties with digitising magazines and a lack of existing archives were cited as the main reasons.

Digitising magazines was first discussed at a Google Book Search publishers meeting, when the search giant floated the idea of digitising titles with a International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), Jens Redmer, Director Google Book Search in Europe described the move as "logical".

But Redmar said technical issues such as paper quality were making the project look like a non-starter and he said that book information was of a higher value to searchers. "Magazines describe a trend at the time. A historic book has more valuable information than a historic magazine." Periodical publishers have also failed to create archives of their content, which Redmar sees as essential to a successful search tool.

Redmar said Google will instead focus on book search. "We want to index more books, the majority of the information in the world is still outside of the internet."

http://books.google.com