Five large publishers have made a separate peace with Google over the inclusion of their books in Google Books, announcing a settlement that resolves the seven-year-old litigation with the search giant.

Google had been fighting a two-front war over its Google Books program. In addition to its dispute with the publishers, it is also defending a lawsuit by the Author's Guild, which is seeking to head a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the nation's authors. Last year, a federal judge threw out a class-action settlement that would have resolved both lawsuits and given Google permission to scan and print thousands of out-of-print books.

"It's been obvious for several years that the authors are going forward [with the lawsuit] and the publishers are uninterested," said James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at New York Law School. He said that after the class-action settlement was rejected, the publishers were ready to cut a private deal. It just took a few months to hammer out the specifics.

Because this settlement is not a class action, the terms are not public and the deal is not subject to court approval. "I can't imagine there's anything interesting in there," Grimmelmann told us. "The only question is how much money changed hands," and neither side is talking about that.

"This does exacerbate the publisher-author tension," Grimmelmann told us. "It used to be the publishers and authors are in this together against Google." Now, he said, "Google is going to increasingly use the consent of the publishers as an argument that the authors don't even speak for copyright owners."

In an e-mailed statement, a spokesman for the publishers said that the deal "shows that digital services can provide innovative means to discover content while still respecting the rights of copyright-holders."

Google says the settlement will allow it to "stay focused on our core mission and work to increase the number of books available to educate, excite and entertain our users via Google Play."