Google to index libraries

Tue Dec 14 20:12:50 2004 Google to Referencing: Google Books`

This is pretty incredible stuff. The expectation is that you'll be able to read books that are out of copyright, and see an excerpt around your search terms for those that are not. I imagine Google will also offer you a handy link to purchase whatever books it presents.

They say it will take 9 months to a year to scan and index something between 10,000 and 100,000 books - rather a wide range, I think, and I would expect that estimate must be for the low end. Unless they've invented a robotic handler, just the human labor involved to scan the books has to be incredible. I suppose some of it is already available in digital form, but certainly not all that much.

A bunch of executives at Microsoft and Yahoo are having a very bad day. Microsoft may have the financial resources to match this, but Google has a several year head start and apparently some new technology that speeds things up.

Gosh, I feel so sorry for Microsoft, don't you?

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