In E-Books, It's an Army vs. Google

Whenever it can, Google likes to have programmers solve its problems. But now it faces a dispute that even its ranks of lawyers and lobbyists are finding hard to smooth over. A broad array of authors, academics, librarians and public interest groups are fighting the company's plan to create a huge digital library and bookstore. Their complaints reached the ears of regulators at the Justice Department, which last month helped derail the plan by asking a court to reject the class-action settlement that spawned it. That request led to a last-minute decision by Google and its partners, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, to redraft the agreement. A federal court hearing in New York on Wednesday will shed light on their progress. Some analysts say the broad-based opposition to Google's lofty plans was unprecedented and a harbinger of the intense scrutiny the company's ambitious agenda will face.