American Exchange
By Michael Stillman
The recent legal settlement between Google and book authors and publishers revealed a statistic that Google had previously kept close to its vest - just how many books have they scanned? According to a posting on the Google Blog, that number now exceeds seven million. That is a higher number than most who follow these things had estimated. Google further noted, "...and we're just getting started. We believe that ultimately we'll provide access to many times that number." While by far the largest, Google is not the only entity scanning and turning books into online searchable and accessible texts. There's the Open Content Alliance, the now discontinued Microsoft digitization project which scanned some 800,000 books, the recently announced PALINET program, and others. Whatever one thinks of the concept of online books, we are seeing some seismic shifts in the book trade beginning to stir....
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