Monday, May 14, 2007

Kahle critical of Google lock-out on book search

Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian, Director and Co-Founder of The Internet Archive, criticised Google on Friday on the policies of their book search project. Google will not allow anyone access to the public domain works in its index and they will not allow the major university libraries it has done deals with to do similar deals with anyone else.

I agree wholeheartedly with Kahle. Just another example of undermining of the Google "don't be evil" motto - when it comes to the choice between making universal online indexing and searching of books possible or strangling the competition by monopolising online book searching, it's an amoral slam dunk for the corporate protect-the-bottom- line mindset.

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