Slashdot Mirror
Google Launches Google Print
Rescate writes "As reported by Reuters,Google is launching Google Print, which will show book excerpts next to regular Google search results. A spokesman said, "We're trying to index every book there is, and make it searchable for our users." Even though this competes with Amazon's A9 search which also searches within books, Google says the two companies will continue to work together, and that Google Print will link to Amazon, as well as other sellers, to buy books listed in the search results. Google will demonstrate the technology Thursday, Oct. 7 at the Frankfurt Book Fair."
I've thought about this before as well. I think the two things that libraries do have going for them are those who cannot afford net connections themselves, and the fact that reading something on paper is still easier than reading something on the screen. Of course Xerox's e-paper could also take care of the latter while free net connections could take of the former, thus allowing your prediction to come true faster than I would think.
There are many out there, myself included, who will never get rid of books. They are just too cool to ever be fully rid of. Of course if there is some type of massive paper famine in a couple years or so, that will change I'm sure, but I have a very hard time parting with any of my books.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I believe books themselves will never die, ebooks are great as a delivery service and are incredibly useful for research - but it won't ever extend to novels and the like. So certain aspects of the libraries we know today wont exist - but a large part of it will.
Actually, from a small university press point of view, I think this technology is great. Sure, you can see a few pages from one of our books, but if the subject is interesting and the book is useful, we're hoping people buy the whole thing. This doesn't make us redundant, it gives us another way to market books. Since many of our books are very specialized, (think monograph), it can be difficult to get them to the people who need the information.
Why should you consult different places to search for different kinds of data? What google tries to achieve is to be your Unique Source of Answers, your first and last stop.
One single unified interface to find anything you might think of. This is the ultimate goal of Google.
It's good for the user because it's easy to learn.
It's even better for Google, who litteraly ends up re-branding the whole world.
nonsense... Do you have any idea how easy it would be to write a random (but still using real words) text generator? A few lines in your scripting language of choice should be enough.
Or should we also stop using text for the content on web pages? Should slashdot convert all text to PNGs?
(and how long until OCR makes that useless anyway?)
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.