Google empire

working

There's something faintly disturbing about Google gobbling up whole libraries of print. It's an unsettling paradox in that the most ubiquitous player in the digital realm is busy colonising bookspace. On the one hand there's a sense in which more knowledge is being made freely available; on the other, the fact that Google will own it (or at least be the all-powerful gatekeeper). For un update on what's been going on between Google, the libraries, and the book publishers, read this, by John Naughton.