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Imo, many of them were already "lost to the world" because there are so few copies they were locked away in a library somewhere. They only way to see them previous to Google Books scanning them was to physically go to the place where the library was and (try to) get permission to see them.
Yes, there are many scholars, researchers, etc., who need physical access to a book - those who are studying a particular person and hope to glean information about that person from his personal library books, for instance, or those who are studying the history of the book itself - but there are many of us who just want the book's content and Google Books has enabled that. Makes this writer very happy.
Some of their restrictions get annoying when I'm so close, though. I recently couldn't access a book published in 1924. I would have thought that would have been in the public domain. I ended up buying it through a used book seller (via used.addall.com).
Frankly, imo, used book sellers are going to be hurt by Google Books and I do regret that. I will add that many of the books I'm so happy to now have access to were books that were either never available on the open market, or if they occasionally appeared were so expensive that few (including me!) could afford them. OOP books will still have a market, I think, though a reduced one. Not everyone will want to purchase a PDF through GB (especially when some scans are unreliable, at best).
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