Google Books Becomes Novel Material
August 29, 2009
The Google Book brouhaha is getting tiresome. My view is that no one other than Google has the dough to scan lots of books. Microsoft and Yahoo withdrew from the tourney grounds. The commercial database publishers don’t have enough cash to fuel their corporate jets. The Library of Congress seems to be on the sidelines. Unless George Soros or someone like him writes a check, the books are not going to be scanned any time soon.
What makes this topic mildly – notice I used the word “mildly” – interesting to me are the weird and unexpected developments in this saga.
Today, courtesy of a Beyond Search reader, that the Special Libraries Association has joined the open book alliance to investigate the Google deal. I find this interesting.
Not much more than one hour later I learned that “EU’s Reding Backs Google in Online Books Row.” Quite a surprise to this addled goose.
More to come I assume.
Stephen Arnold, August 29, 2009
—
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
