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Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Google's been going nuts lately with all of these novel content-indexing ideas. You had the recent announcement of Google Print, and the latest is a major collaboration project with some of the top libraries in the world, in which the big G will index millions of out-of-print and copyrighted books for online searchability. Wow.
I've long thought that there should be no limit to the content that is available for searching online. Google plans to display AdWords ads next to such content, and this move is clearly a win-win-win for Google, book publishers, searchers and -- maybe -- for authors (Wouldn't it be nice if authors were able to get a cut of this?). There will surely be some vexing issues to solve as a result of this project, but if they can be worked out, consider the possibilities!
No one gains anything by having a dusty book tucked away on a neglected library shelf. This project will help ensure that the wealth of knowledge hidden in books is fully revealed to anyone with a web browser.
It will be interesting to see how Amazon reacts to this news. Their "search inside the book" feature holds much promise, but doesn't seem to have gained much traction yet.
Posted by
Cory Kleinschmidt
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