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Random House maybe closer to joining Google's book search project, something the world's largest publisher has been opposed to in the past.

The two companies have been in talks about Google's book-scanning project according to Reuters. A Random House spokesman who was asked about a possible agreement said, "Random House continues to have periodic constructive conversations with Google on issues of mutual relevance."

Random House is a member of the American Association of Publishers and says it still supports a U.S. copyright case filed against Google in 2005 that is being funded by the association.

The suit comes from Penguin, Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Wiley and Simon & Schuster and asks to stop Google from scanning in copyright books it receives from its library partners without explicit permission from publishers.

Google has partnered with over 10,000 publishers who provide books to Google to be entirely scanned. Google make the books partially available to online readers under the agreements with each publisher.

Google has scanned the complete text of more than 1 million books. The total number of books in the world is not known, but WorldCat, a global library collective has 91 million bibliographic records in its database.