Google on the Future of Digital Books
August 1, 2009
Media Bistro ran a fascinating article that is classic Google. I heard Dan Clancy speak earlier this year. I I read the BayNewser’s “Google Engineering Director Spells Out Vision for the Future of Digital Books.” Mr. Clancy is an engaging speaker. He is gentle in appearance, manner and rhetoric.
The point of the write up, in my opinion, was well expressed in this passage:
Google will partner with all interested retailers, so you’ll be able to buy books wherever you like—at an online site or your neighborhood bookstore. The books themselves will be stored “in the cloud,” meaning out on some Google server, rather than on your computer hard drive or in a device you own. And you’ll be able to read them on any device you want—e-reader, phone, computer, or netbook.
BayNewser points out that this vision is different from the pending deal with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. How different? Mr. Clancy is presaging the future. The “pending deal” is about the past. Navigate to BayNewser and read the extensive quotes yourself.
When I read the article, I asked myself, “Is revisionism an increasingly important tool in Google’s public relations arsenal?” And, “Will Google knit together its various publishing initiatives so an author can create, store, and sell books via Google?” Publishers seem to be a litigious, easily disintermediated group when I look to the future.
Stephen Arnold, August 1, 2009
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