Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Generally, I think this book scanning project is good for Google, good for authors and good for society. The idea of having a huge chunk of works easily searchable is good for researchers, and good for authors who may be able to pick up a few more sales that way.
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This isn't about search.
It's about Google violating millions of copyrights, and forcing authors to opt out of their system.
It would be like Random House grabbing books off a library shelf that were written in 1930, not published by RH, putting out electronic versions, without asking authors for permission, without checking anyone's copyrights, and dictating royalty rates. I can only imagine the digital screeches that would result from such actions. (Why Google gets a pass is beyond me.)
Not to mention that Google's book efforts are, to put it mildly, not fantastic and not well supported. As far as I know there is no proofreading, which means lots of OCR errors. The website layout is terrible on small screens. PW believes their market share is hovering around 4%. Google has also already pulled its affiliate services, which let small or indie stores resell Google ebooks on their own sites.