Let's start with some history ...
More than two thousand years ago, Qin Shi Huang unified China, and became the first emperor of China. In between 213 to 206 BCE, he ordered burning of books, except those from his chancellor Li Si's school of thoughts. Hundreds of scholars were also buried alive. This incident is probably one of the earliest illustrations of how important it is to manage and control information and knowledge.
Now come back to 2009. Google Inc has a wonderful idea to scan and digitize books around the world to build a e-library online. This is exactly the opposite of what Qin Shi Huang did. In my opinion, this project matches that of Qin Shi Huang in terms of its scale and impact to the world, of course more towards the benefit of mankind in this case. Could you imagine any books at your fingertips? Could you imagine all knowledge being properly stored and managed generation after generation?
But of course, Google is still a profit-seeking entity, it does this for its own benefit. Just imagine when reading a book, all sorts of Google advertisements related to the content line up readily for you. That must be a cash cow for Google.
There are still a lot of legal and copyright issue to be addressed for the project to be successful. As a consumer, I wish Google all the best.
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