The consumers can search books by keywords and view partial content. Google provides links to buy these books and of course content-related advertisements. (A9.com, Inc offers a similar service.)

After deciding to extend this service by dealing with several public and university libraries to scan all of their books, Google was suited several times for copyright breach.

The latest lawsuit came from Author’s Guild who says that it’s not up to Google or anyone else to decide whether and how their works will be copied.
They also try to find a way to make the [1] University of Michigan library to join the suit. (Other libraries which agreed to collaborate with Google are: [2] Widener Library - Harvard, [3] Green Library - Stanford, [4] Bodleian Library - Oxford and the [5] New York Public Library).

Google defended on their website saying they’re sorry for being sued for a program that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world - especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program. They also reminded they won’t show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives permission to show more). They will show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries.