Google and Its Enemies

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: h_bray () globe com
Date: December 3, 2007 11:07:19 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Google and Its Enemies

A lively and skeptical overview of Google's campaign to digitize the
world's books:

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/431afruv.asp

Excerpt:

"Google's corporate philosophy is based on the model which brought them
success: organizing and giving away other people's content, creating  
space
for advertisements in the process. The enormous success Google found  
with
that model in the search engine business spurred it to try and impose  
it in
every arena. In the Google worldview, content is individually  
valueless. No
one page is more important than the next; the value lies in the page  
view.
And a page view is a page view, regardless of whether the page in  
question
has a picture of a cat, a single link to another site, or the full  
text of
Freakonomics. When all you're selling is ad space, the value shifts from
the content to the viewer. And ultimately the content is valued at  
nothing.
And here, finally, is the larger problem posed by Google's actions.  
Books
are not in any important sense user-centric. Whether or not a book has
readers matters little. Books stand on their own, over time, as ideas  
and
creations. In the world of books, it is the ideas and the authors that
matter most, not the readers. That is why the copyright exists in the  
first
place, to protect the value of these created works, a value which  
Google is
trying mightily to deny.


As much as any other American business, Google is the corporate  
embodiment
of the Internet's first principles. And as with so much else on the
Internet, the promise of Google Book Search lies somewhere off on the
horizon, while the dangers it poses today are very real."


Hiawatha Bray
Technology Reporter
Boston Globe
135 Morrissey Blvd.
P.O. Box 55819
Boston, MA 02205-5819 USA
617-929-3119 voice
617-929-3183 fax
617-233-9419 cell
bray () globe com
Recent writings: www.boston.com/business/technology/bray



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