That's an interesting article. Particularly this bit:
Quote:
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“We have never said that the same kinds of outcomes would not be available to Microsoft or Amazon or anyone else who is willing to make the same investments,” said Richard Sarnoff, former chairman of the Association of American Publishers and co-chairman of the American unit of Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House. “We have a road map to do it now.”
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While it may be the case that this agreement doesn't stand up in the courts, I would be willing to bet that any subsequent agreements are going to end up quite similar to this one, making this more of a delaying action on the part of Google's competitors than anything else.
Google's scans aren't all that great, but presently they're the only way some of this content is available. Seems to me that Microsoft, Yahoo, et al could compete on the quality of the scans. Other areas open to competition are the output formats, searchability, etc. I'm not seeing where the anti-competitive aspect comes in, frankly.