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Amazon, MS, and Yahoo Against Google's Library
anonymousNR writes "From the BBC, 'Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle said.'"
It's actually about a corrupt attempt by Google to have the sole right to make out of print books available. I know the companies in the alliance don't have many fans on Slashdot, but this time they're right.
A-fucking-men.
When Google goes evil, not if, they are going to make Emperor Palpatine look like Barak Obama by comparision. It's going to be apocalyptic. Companies, industries and even nations are going to feel the weight of all their own secrets and knowledge crushing down upon them as it Google squashes all around it into an easily indexed pulp. We are going to see Google Private Eye franchises, Google protection rackets, Google industrial espionage, citizen profiling, financial translation analysis. You name it. Our data will be the end of us all, and Google will be company controlling the databases.
You see when Google turns, not if, It's the not just going to bring the data and apps it currently has to the dark side. It's going to bring a sizeable proportion of its engineers and PhDs with it. And army of Geeks ready willing and able to remould the internet and our very society with the algorithms under their control. There will be no historical precedent for the transition or its ramifications. Microsoft will seem benevolent by comparision.
It's coming. Humans don't stay angels forever.
May the Maths Be with you!
It may be open as in free right now but with Micro$oft and Amazon involved pretty soon it will be "not-open-at-all, pay through the nose for DRM'd crap that you can only view on their proprietary device".