Reading in Cyberspace?!

Google is the leading search engine in cyberspace and once again. Google has come up with many different tools that will help internet users gain access to whatever information they need. Google Book Search is one of Google’s newest controversial projects. The purpose of the Google Book Search is to provide Internet users with easy – and free – access to books. Google achieves this easy access by scanning books and storing them into its database. You may be thinking, “But isn’t that illegal?!” That age-old question has been asked by many people. To avoid being sued by publishing companies and authors, Google only grants full access to books that aren’t copy-righted and are out of print. Books that are still in print or are copyrighted, however, Google provides “snippets” of, which are basically previews.

Although many people find this Google Book Search helpful and convenient, many people will also feel the contrary. This new library-based digitization will negatively affect Google's relationships with publishers. By putting the full text of books online and available to everyone around the world for free, publishers and authors will lose on money. Since their books are available online for their audience to view, some readers will no longer see the point in purchasing the actual books. It is more convenient to read the books online and most importantly, it's free. The fact that Google makes profit from scanning these books online will also only further negatively impact this relationship.

Google's competitors will most definitely come up with their own new tool that will challenge the Google Book Search. Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are all basically coming up with similar technology for Internet users. For Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo! came up with Yahoo! Mail and Google with GMail. Without a doubt, for whatever other tool one company comes up with, their competitors will surely create something similar. This case with the Google Book Search will be no different.

The mere existence of Google has already affected the way we access information online. The new Google Book Search will only further the opportunities we have to gain information. We no longer have to go to the library for certain books because it will be available to us through the comfort of our home computers.

I personally don’t think librarians would or should be threatened by this new technology. There are many people in the world who still like to get access to information and read books the old fashioned way. The Internet doesn’t always give reliable information, while the library does. Also, readers, myself included, would rather read a book comfortably on a chair or on a bed, rather having to stare at a monitor. Reading old paperbacks are also more portable and more convenient to bring than having to lug around a laptop just to read a book online. Another thing to consider is the fact that Google is not able to provide the full text of the majority of books being read right now, so librarians should not feel threatened.

I think that the Google Book Search is a great tool to gain access to information. However, it only gives users limited access to books they need, if not any at all. So until Google comes up with a way to scan full text of books without bumping into copyright infringements or new law suits, I won’t be using it myself.