Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
Yeah, well, no one else was even trying to provide book searching like this. Not the publishers, not any of the other search etc. companies, not Amazon, not any governments. So I'm not going to cry too hard over the "competitive advantage" Google has allegedly gained in this settlement when as far as I can see, no one wanted to compete with them.
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Er... Well, there was Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders (admittedly only for out-of-copyright books -- they don't have a legal budget!). The "Million Book project" kicked off by CMU's own Dr. Raj Reddy. A Microsoft effort whose name I forget. Some smaller efforts through some European national libraries (details are too hazy for me to remember -- damn these senior moments!).
Xenophon
(at Carnegie Mellon University "CMU")