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How Google Book Search Got Lost (backchannel.com)
Google Books was the company's first moonshot. But 15 years later, the project is stuck in low-Earth orbit, argues an article on Backchannel. From the article: When Google Books started almost 15 years ago, it also seemed impossibly ambitious: An upstart tech company that had just tamed and organized the vast informational jungle of the web would now extend the reach of its search box into the offline world. By scanning millions of printed books from the libraries with which it partnered, it would import the entire body of pre-internet writing into its database. [...] Two things happened to Google Books on the way from moonshot vision to mundane reality. Soon after launch, it quickly fell from the idealistic ether into a legal bog, as authors fought Google's right to index copyrighted works and publishers maneuvered to protect their industry from being Napsterized. A decade-long legal battle followed -- one that finally ended last year, when the US Supreme Court turned down an appeal by the Authors Guild and definitively lifted the legal cloud that had so long hovered over Google's book-related ambitions. But in that time, another change had come over Google Books, one that's not all that unusual for institutions and people who get caught up in decade-long legal battles: It lost its drive and ambition. Google stopped updating Books blog in 2012, and folded it into the main Google Search blog. The author reports that Google still has people working on Book Search, and they are adding new books, but the pace is rather slower.
When I worked at the Google IT help desk in 2008, the building next door had all the book scanners. It was supposedly a miserable place to work at, low pay for flipping book pages, a relentless daily quota and a high turnover rate. Makes help desk support look like paradise.
I have a friend who is weird even by my social groups standards.
One of his 'interests' is preserving old DEC documentation. They just use a binding guillotine and a high speed sheet feeder scanner. Along with countless tricks to restore tape for one last read pass etc.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
>Are they a shareholder-answerable business?
Yes, and they should cut executive pay. There are thousands of highly talented individuals that would do excellently at senior level management and board level positions for little to no pay. Am I using the 'asshole businessperson' logic correctly?
>Does it make them money?
You're posting on Slashdot, which *used* to be a haven for IT professionals, and the stereotype of 'IT only costs money, it generates no revenue' is still alive and well. But sure, you do you.
>No? What did you expect?
Exactly fucking this. They're not called 'moonshots' for nothing. Maybe you're just an ignorant asshole that knows nothing of the first Apollo missions, but go look those up.
>This isn't surprising. It never took off like some other things, it therefore turns into an expense with little return (Do they charge a percentage of book sales found through their searches? Can they enforce that and stop you just taking the ISBN and buying from Amazon once you've found it?), so it will die when people lose personal interest in it.
You need a better prescription because your shortsightedness is pretty bad. Let's see, Google could make a scientific publishing platform, combine that with search to prioritize and encourage people to check out their paid article/news service, which could have fact checking built in, and they could work out deals with the Associated Press to open up an online only news publishing wing. Google knows that there are certain people that *will* pay for things, and so they could use their vast inventory of information from books to complement/fill out services.
Hell, they could take interesting random snippets from books that Google thinks are relevant to search terms, put some performance metrics on it, such as time spent reading quotes/text sections, or give people automated reports/answers to relatively complex questions, like 'what are the differences between x and y', and Google could compile a report with answers on it.
>The only things I can see staying any significant length of time are Google search and Google Apps. Everything else is just a boredom / filler project that can disappear like so many others, Google or not.
So that whole 'Android' thing didn't work out, huh? And mobile search just sucks donkey balls, right?
And those self driving cars are just shit, right? And none of those patents will ever be useful, amirite?
Being an academic researcher, a future where Google Books and Google Scholar did not exist would reduce scientific output by well over 50%.
Everyone uses both to find citations and data in minutes. That would take hours and booking assistance with a librarian in the university library to accomplish the same task that needs to be repeated dozens of times for each paper.
And that is assuming the university library has a copy on hand.