Google Book Search


Should google be allowed to make all of the worlds books available online at no cost to them? It's a very interesting question. I just got off the phone with a sales rep from google books. They are actively pursuing publishing companies like Presbyterian Publishing Corporation to get us on board. Its a very flashy presentation and it makes total sense. This program does really nothing more than organize information that's already available. In some ways it's more controlled than some of the information that you can currently find through google or yahoo. I remember a few years ago I was able to find the whole Good Will Hunting (Good Will Hunting (Miramax Collector's Series)) manuscript on yahoo.com. I was able to download it and print out certain scenes that I was looking for. Did Yahoo pay for that screenplay? Of course not, one of their crawlers grabbed it off some other site. Google's plan is to put all of the worlds information in one searchable place. It gives people like you and me the opportunity to read some random pages and then choose to purchase if we would like from the publisher or another approved vendor. They are not interested in being in the retail business at this time. Just information gathering and sharing. It feels legal. What do you think?