In a move to ease the concerns of European authors and publishers, pertaining to the search engine's unauthorized scanning of copyright-protected books by European authors, Google said on Monday that said that it will not include the commercially-available European books in its online registry of orphaned and out-of-print works, without due permission from the rights' holders.

Clarifying its move in a statement, Google said that the new terms of settlement with European publishers would imply that books which are still saleable in Europe, but no longer available to US consumers, will not now be included in Google's scanned catalogues, till the time the authors do not themselves desire their inclusion.

The Google decision, to remove all 'marketable' European books from its $125 million US settlement with authors and publishers, comes as an appeasing signal in response to elaborate discussions initiated by the European Commission with the aim of "seeking precise details" both on the "exact scope of the settlement" as well as "how many European works or publications will potentially be affected."

Noting that several European publishers, rights holders, libraries, and Internet commerce businesses had criticized the Google settlement fearing it to lead to "a de facto monopoly" in the up-and-coming digital books market, Google program creator Dan Clancy said that those concerns had now been addressed with the emphasis on rights' holder control!