Under the terms of the deal, Google agreed to pay the sum to a collection of publishers in order to settle a 2005 lawsuit concerning the company’s right to digitise copyrighted works. The deal has not yet been made official.

Such an action by the DoJ could once again jeopardise Google’s plan to construct a huge digital book archive.

The company has been working on the project for nearly five years, and has secured deals with many of the world’s top libraries to put their entire catalogues online.

Google also announced earlier this month that it will open an online market for electronic-books.

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