Rumors that the DOJ had started reviewing the proposed agreement surfaced in April. The DOJ confirmed that it was conducting a formal investigation in July.

Those following the case have been widely anticipating the result of the DOJ's probe of the proposed agreement, which has been loudly praised and criticized since it was announced in October of last year.

book authors and the Authors Guild filed a class action lawsuit, while five large publishers filed a separate lawsuit as representatives of the Association of American Publishers' membership.

The lawsuits were brought after Google launched a program to scan and index sometimes entire collections from the libraries of major universities without always getting permission from the copyright owners of the books.

Google made the text of the books searchable on its book search engine, claiming it's protected by the fair use principle because it only showed snippets of text for in-copyright books it had scanned without permission.