[tirsales]

Originally Posted by epiphany

Even if this means there are fewer books scanned and they are of a lower quality as roger64 described?

In the long run all books will be available. Lower quality is a problem, but a problem that will solve itself in the long run.

Of course Google is scanning books to make a profit but that is what will incentivise them to provide large numbers of high quality books. Just like profit motivates them to provide me with my search engine, email, home page, RSS aggegator, maps and a host of other great products.

And just like profits motivates them to e.g. restrict access to some products, to do whatever they please with your data, etc
I dont doubt their quality - I doubt that (in the long run) we will get the same service, accesibility, etc from Google then we would from libraries. If book-scanning is not feasible any more Google will simply drop it. If some books dont make profit, there is no guarantee that they will continue to host them. There is not even a guarantee that they will continue to provide any book-related service.
Now imagine them getting a monopole ...

Let me ask you, what will motivate the national libraries to provide a better service than Google?

Simply being better should be motivation enough (Apart from that they need to show a reason for their continuing existence. And they dont need to be better then Google - just good enough).