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leader in the digital industry through its exploding NOOKbrand of eReaders, reader’s tablets, and digital content.In 2012, Barnes & Noble and Microsoft announced thecompletion of their previously announced strategic partnershipin NOOK Media LLC, with an investment of $300million by Microsoft in NOOK Media LLC at a post-moneyvaluation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately17.6% equity stake, with Barnes & Noble owning the remainingshares. At the end of 2012, Pearson bought a 5%stake in Nook Media by investing $89.5m in cash. (TheBookseller, 2 January 2013).Barnes & Noble had received a $204 million investmentfrom Liberty Media in August 2011.In fall 2012, Barnes & Noble had brought its Nook and digitalbookstore to the UK through a new www.nook.co.ukonline storefront. This marked the first time the companywas expanding its business internationally.Barnes & Noble has thereupon formed partnerships withseveral British retailers, including John Lewis, Dixons,Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Blackwell’s, Foyles and Argos, to sellNook HD, Nook HD+, and E-Ink devices. The company hasalso opened its European headquarters in Luxembourg.In October 2009, B&N had introduced its eReading devicebranded as Nook, the first Android-based eReader. Oneyear later, Barnes & Noble launched Nook Color, the firstfull-color touch Reader’s Tablet. In 2011, Barnes & Nobleintroduced Nook Simple Touch, a full touchscreen device,followed by Nook Tablet. This spring, Barnes & Noble introducedNook Simple Touch with GlowLight, the world’sfirst E-Ink Reader that enables reading in the dark. And inSeptember, Barnes & Noble launched Nook HD, the lightestand highest-resolution 7-inch tablet, and Nook HD+,the lightest full HD tablet. The company also announcedthe premiere this fall of Nook Video. Barnes & Noble has anestimated 27% market share of the U.S. ebook market anda catalog of more than 3 million titles in its Nook Bookstore.GoogleIn 2004, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) introduced booksearches of full text and, in order to increase the amountof digitized books available for such a search, an initiativeto digitize significant numbers of printed books from publicand university libraries. Initially named Google BookSearch, Google Print, and Google Library Project, all of theseactivities are today combined under the label of GoogleBooks. As of March 2012, over 20 million books have beenscanned, Google reports.As early as 2005, a controversy emerged between Googleand authors’ as well as publishers’ associations and individualpublishers in the US and overseas over the inclusionof “snippets” of copyrighted works. After seven years oflitigation and an initial settlement rejected in 2011 by aNew York court, an agreement has been reached betweenGoogle and the American Association of Publishers as ofOctober 4, 2012. The agreement offers US publishers theoption to either withdraw titles under copyright and scannedby Google in libraries, or to keep them in Google’sprogram and receive in return a digital copy and permissionto commercially use the scan. Furthermore, users canview up to 20 percent of a title and, provided the publisherconsents, purchase it through the Google Play shop. Thesettlement was expected to make available several milliontitles scanned by Google. Related litigation between Googleand several French publishers, including Hachette, AlbinMichel, Flammarion Gallimard, and La Martiniere, hasbeen settled in out-of-court agreements (Livres Hebdo, 7September 2011). However, the US Authors’ Guild is pursuingtheir legal battle with Google. (Publishers Weekly, 3April 2014)In theory at least, with a settlement, the road might openup for the largest library of digitized works to be broadlyand globally disseminated, including massive numbers oftitles under copyright, as procedures for their legal distribution,including commercial downloads through Google,emerge. At this point, those 20 million books are maintainedby the library of the Hathi Trust, a “partnership ofmajor research institutions,” funded notably by Google.Only half of the digitized works are in English. The otherhalf, consisting of over half a million books in German,434,000 in French, and over 10,000 in Ukrainian, Bulgarian,or Serbian, turn this into the largest and most linguisticallydiverse repository of ebooks (for a detailed discussion, see“Global ebook distribution complexities”, 28 November2012). However, after years of litigation, it is yet unclear ifthat digital archive comes to life, in terms of readers accessingany of it, or if the long quarrel, in practical terms,has after all exhausted the initial campaign of Google, forbetter or for worse.While Google’s ambition with regard to books started atsearching and cataloging them based on a full-text searchand earning revenues from customized advertising in thesearch results, books have started to be included in its digitalmultimedia distribution service, branded Google Play,99 The Global eBook Report