So afterall MS has absolutely no reason to worry about Google. All the rocket scientists that Google has hired finally concluded that they need Sun to write the much rumored web office. Hah! What could be funnier than this? Sun Office started as a lousy knock-off of MS Office and soon Sun realized that it cannot fund its development and open-sourced it. Now, after years of efforts from volunteers, Open Office was inching closer, M$ spoiled everything by releasing a new generation office suite. Poor open office has lot of catching up to do again!
I have no idea what made Google chose Sun, a company that has proven track record of failing at writing user GUI software, to partner with. MS on the other hand has years of success in this sphere so it doesn't take a genius to guess who will win at the end. My 2 cents to google - team with jotspot.com instead.
If you want to protect your work, this isn't that difficult, and something your publisher would probably do for you if you didn't want to do it yourself.
May I ask why? A author spends years writing a book and why can't Google take his written permission before caching my book in its servers?
Um... its not like they're not getting the money they normally would've received from the sale. In fact their sales probably increase do to more people finding out about their book.
problem is google will make money from the click only that does not even generate a sale. Not to mention the fact that Google will track people's book search and clicks to send them targetted ads of crappy companies.
ya, i'm sure they're really moaning about extra money.
They will moan and graon about because I am sure the pay will be as pathetic as adsense or even worse
If you are hoping to make lots of sales of your book based on a couple of paragraphs within your book, then you have a lot more to worry about than google.
Dude.. have you ever done research for writing?
Dude, you just said they'll share profits with the author from ads...
1. The only thing Google is trying is to make money out of other people's work.
2. The sale of a book brings author money. The click on a link without sale only brings Google money.
3. Local library may not have the book. Local library is funded by people paying taxes out of their hard earned money. Local library buys the book.
4. 2-3 pages are sometimes enough to get an idea. A researcher looks at an index of a book and then reads the pages based on keyword. Google provides this service to the researcher.
Consider the case of ppl researching on a particular topic. They just look for a keyword and then read the 3 relevant pages that Google shows. They get the material and there is no need to buy the book.
Now this is a right step towards making book contents searcheable online. I will hate to see one company like Google copying and caching all books in its massive cluster of servers. I know that Google kool-aid that "we are about general good" is running deeply in the veins of slashdot types.
Since when was scanning books from libraries and making them available to public for a profit was considered "fair use"? This kind of stuff is done by pirates. Go to the major cities in China and India and you will see piles of copied book in the streets all sold for 1/10th the original price without giving anything back to the authors. The pirates can say that they are doing a favor to the authors by driving them out of obscurity.
The message the alliance is sending out to the authors is
we are not for profit
we will scan your book only if you want us to do so
your book will be indexed based on your approval and copyright agreement with you and the publishers
Compare this to what Google is telling the authors
we will scan your book, fill a form and tell us if you don't want us to do so
we will take sale comissions from amazon, buy.com, bn.com, etc. without sharing anything with you
if we show ads, we will share the profits with you
we will show excerpts of your book, so if a researcher is researching on a topic he can find what you have written about a topic without ever having to buy your book, too bad, heh heh, write a fiction book dude
we will cache your book in our servers and only we will reserve the right to profit from your scanned book
So much for do no evil. Kudos to yahoo for bringing the open content alliance, gutenberg, and other similar projects to limelight - these are some really nice collections that were hidden by the noise created by 'google print'.
Slashdot Mirror
So afterall MS has absolutely no reason to worry about Google. All the rocket scientists that Google has hired finally concluded that they need Sun to write the much rumored web office. Hah! What could be funnier than this? Sun Office started as a lousy knock-off of MS Office and soon Sun realized that it cannot fund its development and open-sourced it. Now, after years of efforts from volunteers, Open Office was inching closer, M$ spoiled everything by releasing a new generation office suite. Poor open office has lot of catching up to do again!
I have no idea what made Google chose Sun, a company that has proven track record of failing at writing user GUI software, to partner with. MS on the other hand has years of success in this sphere so it doesn't take a genius to guess who will win at the end. My 2 cents to google - team with jotspot.com instead.
May I ask why? A author spends years writing a book and why can't Google take his written permission before caching my book in its servers?
Um... its not like they're not getting the money they normally would've received from the sale. In fact their sales probably increase do to more people finding out about their book.problem is google will make money from the click only that does not even generate a sale. Not to mention the fact that Google will track people's book search and clicks to send them targetted ads of crappy companies.
ya, i'm sure they're really moaning about extra money.They will moan and graon about because I am sure the pay will be as pathetic as adsense or even worse
If you are hoping to make lots of sales of your book based on a couple of paragraphs within your book, then you have a lot more to worry about than google.Dude.. have you ever done research for writing?
Dude, you just said they'll share profits with the author from ads...Heh Heh..Yeah google will make writer millionares
1. The only thing Google is trying is to make money out of other people's work. 2. The sale of a book brings author money. The click on a link without sale only brings Google money. 3. Local library may not have the book. Local library is funded by people paying taxes out of their hard earned money. Local library buys the book. 4. 2-3 pages are sometimes enough to get an idea. A researcher looks at an index of a book and then reads the pages based on keyword. Google provides this service to the researcher.
Consider the case of ppl researching on a particular topic. They just look for a keyword and then read the 3 relevant pages that Google shows. They get the material and there is no need to buy the book.
Now this is a right step towards making book contents searcheable online. I will hate to see one company like Google copying and caching all books in its massive cluster of servers. I know that Google kool-aid that "we are about general good" is running deeply in the veins of slashdot types.
Since when was scanning books from libraries and making them available to public for a profit was considered "fair use"? This kind of stuff is done by pirates. Go to the major cities in China and India and you will see piles of copied book in the streets all sold for 1/10th the original price without giving anything back to the authors. The pirates can say that they are doing a favor to the authors by driving them out of obscurity.
The message the alliance is sending out to the authors is
- we are not for profit
- we will scan your book only if you want us to do so
- your book will be indexed based on your approval and copyright agreement with you and the publishers
Compare this to what Google is telling the authors- we will scan your book, fill a form and tell us if you don't want us to do so
- we will take sale comissions from amazon, buy.com, bn.com, etc. without sharing anything with you
- if we show ads, we will share the profits with you
- we will show excerpts of your book, so if a researcher is researching on a topic he can find what you have written about a topic without ever having to buy your book, too bad, heh heh, write a fiction book dude
- we will cache your book in our servers and only we will reserve the right to profit from your scanned book
So much for do no evil. Kudos to yahoo for bringing the open content alliance, gutenberg, and other similar projects to limelight - these are some really nice collections that were hidden by the noise created by 'google print'.