I do not think so as one who has frequently read and sometimes quoted some of such, for Google is only providing a small portion of such works, too often simply in little text boxes, which i think is for cases in which the publisher has not given some sort of permission for the work. This is not consistent so i am only surmising that Google has some lilited permission for some books. But which text you cannot copy, unless you transcribe it or do a screen shot and use OCR software.
Moreover, there is nothing said about Google charging to read these portions, and instead they actually foster sales by pointing readers to sites where they can buy the book (by which advertising is how Google gets some money). Amazon also enables readers to read some portions of books. Thus it is perhaps like giving customers samples of a cake, and then pointing them to where they can purchase the whole thing.
And as such, like letting customers read books in a brick and mortar store, Google books or the like is more likely to advertise and sell books rather than to hinder it, especially since the books are more likely to be cited, such as by Wikipedia.
And SCOTUS has ruled before that a small portion of copyrighted works can be used for reviews etc. FR itself depends on this, and could likely win against sites which forbid any copy/paste of their articles. Therefore, unless Google books is providing very substantial portions of books without permission to do so, and charging to read them, then it can hardly be charged with doing something illegal, esp when they make it hard to copy the text.
But YouTube likely abounds with illegal posting of videos, a few of which I likely have watched ("Thief in the night," etc), though i do want to be legal. Yet i suspect some authors implicitly sanction it as it is also likely to increase sales. It is the downloading of such that Google states it does does not sanction or enable, and takes down vids when notified of CR violations.
like i said in my previous post- whoel books are posted online at the site i linked to- and they aren’t just portions of books- and google is profitting by advertising etc-
[[And SCOTUS has ruled before that a small portion of copyrighted works can be used for reviews etc.]]
I think though in this case they are saying whole books can be scanned- not just portions-
[[unless Google books is providing very substantial portions of books without permission to do so,]]
I believe that is what they were doing because htis is why the writer’s guild was trying to stop them