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That's a really interesting situation and a fascinating conflict. The publishers were right in thinking that Googles project could eventually lead to business disaster. Not overnight but if the books became available like that publishers and booksellers would lose a lot of sales and over time a lot more till they eventually became almost irrelevant.
On the other hand it just might have been one of the major cultural milestones in history. I remember reading an article, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, listing the events that changed civilization most. These included, according to that article, agriculture, which lead to cities and government, the discovery that the universe didn't revolve around the Earth, pointing out how unimportant we are, Freud's discovery of the subconscious and the invention of the atom bomb, which told us we could come to an end at any time. I suspect that the internet probably belongs on that list as well but that article was too long ago for that to be considered.
The Google project, in a similar article written a few hundred years in the future, might be on that list and even top it if it had been allowed to proceed. And yet the things that brought it down were very real. That just might be a tragic flaw in capitalism.
Capitalism is greed put to work to society's benefit. Sometimes it doesn't.
Barry
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