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71 Comments
- rjc5056, on 08/23/2009, -1/+78Doesn't their unified stance against it tell us this is obviously a threat to their profits and thus a great thing for consumers?
- Cerin, on 08/22/2009, -2/+77"A wide cross-section of libraries, colleges and authors have endorsed Google's book settlement."
Heaven forbid these companies do what's in the interest of authors. Amazon clearly has a financial stake in stopping Google from working directly with authors, but Yahoo and Microsoft have no interest in digitizing books and are only jumping onboard to stick their finger in the eye of a competitor. - SteamGear, on 08/23/2009, -2/+50This is the type of ***** that makes the world step backwards.
- DTftw, on 08/23/2009, -3/+34:( big bullies... I like Google.
- JDoorjam, on 08/23/2009, -1/+32Yes, because time and time again, the proven path to success against an innovative competitor is to try to stifle innovation at all costs.
I'm not saying the Google Books project is problem-free, but Christ almighty, don't Yahoo and Microsoft realize that being aggressively outdated doesn't help?
The T-Rex did not go extinct for lack of teeth. - clarient, on 08/23/2009, -2/+32FTA: 'That said, it's ironic that some of these complaints are coming from a company that abandoned its book digitization effort because it lacked "commercial intent".' Stricker addressed this comment at Microsoft, which abandoned its efforts to make digital book copies to focus on more profitable online opportunities.
WTF.
Also, ***** THESE STUPID JUMPING COMMENT BOXES, WHY IS THIS STILL A PROBLEM. - Oatlord, on 08/23/2009, -1/+28Didn't read the rest of your post, but yeah, the jumping boxes suck!
- DS2892, on 08/23/2009, -4/+25those fooken prawns!!!
- FKnight, on 08/23/2009, -1/+22Dugg for complaining about the jumping comment boxes.
- unhg, on 08/23/2009, -2/+21As with all story books, the hero is always against stacked odds.
- Valyn, on 08/23/2009, -1/+15Seriously, how is this ***** still a problem?
- Aleks, on 08/23/2009, -0/+13Want some cat food?
- supn9, on 08/23/2009, -1/+14precisely!
- HeyyyJoe, on 08/23/2009, -0/+13People don't run our country anymore, corporations do.
- ljohnblaze, on 08/23/2009, -0/+13I disagree. Google doesn't have to sell "things" to people to turn a profit. And yes, you can give things away for free and still make profit. It's the not-that-new face of advertising. I'd normally cite articles and links that might paint a clearer picture for you, but you might as well just Google it yourself.
And regarding who's profits are better... I think that it's obvious that Google's angle is advertising, but they're also about open-source and cross-platforming. I personally don't have any privacy issues that might result from their massive collection of my porn history. My credit rating hasn't mattered for years and anyone stealing my identity might as well take care of my traffic tickets while they're at it. Customized commercials and personalized advertising preferences in return for an endless supply of audio, video and social content? Yea, let's put that extra change in Google's bank. - lendrick, on 08/23/2009, -6/+18How adorable. All the huge corporations are fighting over who gets to ream us.
- nerddtvg, on 08/23/2009, -0/+11And the settlement does not exclude other companies from following Google's footsteps and making their own digital libraries. These companies could do it themselves and have a competing library, but choose not to, most likely because they are afraid they could never catch up.
- ddlam, on 08/23/2009, -1/+12Why is there a picture of a Sony reader and not a Kindle in the article when the caption is talking about the Kindle? -_-.
- goffy59, on 08/23/2009, -1/+12Well ***** Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon. Simple as that.
- Spamorama, on 08/23/2009, -1/+11More like the Closed Book Alliance.
- clarient, on 08/23/2009, -0/+10Gmail may not has the same number of subscribers that providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, or even AOL have, but I would find it a safe bet that the majority of people who DO use Gmail are, as a whole, more familiar and comfortable with technology and will be the population that continues to drive innovation in the field. Yahoo and Microsoft have a grasp on an older generation of internet and email users that will slowly lose ground unless they start evolving alongside of Google, rather then being dragged along in spite of themselves.
- JDoorjam, on 08/23/2009, -0/+9I didn't say that Google was the most successful innovator in the universe. In fact, I didn't even claim they were good at it all. I said that trying to compete against innovation by stifling it is woefully ineffective.
- cevil203, on 08/23/2009, -3/+12why who would be mad enough to oppose google!?
- pagemap, on 08/23/2009, -1/+8HAHA, well MS, YH, and AZ have been asleep, their real competitors have been in wait. Bring on the 21st century!
- damack, on 08/23/2009, -1/+7They know they are not going to catch up with Google once that machine gets going so they are trying to stop it by any means necessary. It is quite pitiful really if they had a problem with the way Google were doing things they could set up their own alternatives but to be honest this is expected they've all been eating Googles dust for years now.
They know they can't compete with the future so they decide to try and stop it from happening. Yahoo screwed around with Google for years and look where it landed them. Microsoft is next. - acknotSW, on 08/23/2009, -1/+6In this case though, google profit translates into the best interest of the consumer .
- wiseman666, on 08/23/2009, -0/+5anyone notice how the "Amazon, who sell the Kindle e-book reader, may have something to lose from Google's approach" caption accompanies a photo of a Sony device?
- tnoy, on 08/23/2009, -0/+5It happens for me with just about ever browser/OS combination that I've ever used.
It hasn't happened with Chrome on Linux yet, but I've only been using it for three days so far, so who knows.
Also,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI1Z0PNu4NU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KqGwHxqsMw - MegaPewPew, on 08/23/2009, -1/+6According to Micro/Yahoo/Amazon a monopoly is bad...but collusion is just ***** great? Not to mention, last I checked getting into a market =/ monopoly. Is it googles fault they are more efficient and productive then these 3 crying Corporations?
- inactive, on 08/23/2009, -0/+5if you can't beat 'em
unite to ***** everything - Gareth321, on 08/23/2009, -0/+5And they don't like silly things like the well-being of society getting in the way of their profit margins.
- kipmarlowe, on 08/23/2009, -1/+5The middleman between content author (be it music or literature) and consumer isn't as necessary anymore. These middlemen need to go, and they need not be replaced by yet another set of big companies who control the distribution of the digital forms of these works.
Google's ad revenue business model just happens, in this case, to work out well for the consumer when compared to, say, Amazon who'd just love to hold a "publishing" monopoly and charge us almost as much for digital books as traditional brick and mortar publishers do for paperbound books. But what would be really great is for them to be able to charge us even more, eventually, for digital books than is currently charged for paperbound books.
"What the market will bare" doesn't just refer to what the consumer is willing to pay, but often what the consumer is forced to pay.
No, I'm not a Google fanboy (hate that ***** word) but if Google wants to publish over copyright-expired books for all of us to explore, review & rate, then read & enjoy . . . in ways many of us haven't been able to before, then all the power to them. Yea, Google will make ad revenue, but I'll be able to find and read interesting mystery novels, for instance, instead of them gathering dust in disparate, obscure libraries around the globe. There are tens if not thousands of books written that are not just entertaining and enlightening enough to actually read, but that haven't been read in decades.
I want.
And if you read the story, Microsoft stupidly abandoned the idea because it wouldn't make enough profit for them. Now that they just might succeed with Bing they're suddenly getting hmmm . . . in the head. And now that Google is set to increase traffic and ad revenue (and even sell some books outright, like Amazon) Amazon thinks Google could become a book distributing monopoly. Okay. And Microsoft is claiming that Google should also, like Microsoft did, abandon the idea, but not because it doesn't make profit, but because it might become a monopoly.
But already massive Microsoft who owns a monopoly in the OS and office software categories already, can takeover Yahoo and get that much closer to dominating yet another field, or at least owning half of it? Yes. And so can Google enter the book distribution business.
"Double standard."
I see all these big ass businesses ***** around with each other, these days, even taunting each other childishly, instead of simply competing straight on, head to head. It's as if simultaneously circumventing competition is it's now built into the profit & loss machinery of each company.
Boards and principle shareholders are too greedy, shortsighted and immature themselves (compared to decades past) do keep this ***** in check when it often ends up hurting the entire industry. In one of my wife's MBA classes they talked about mutually destructive competition among game console makers, logging industry infighting, and some hazardous situation with medical equipment manufacturers. In the end, everybody loses (actually, except for the consumer in the case of game consoles) and loses just so, what, so the companies can beat each other up? (She hasn't really explained it fully. Suffice to say it wasn't always this way, and that it started in the greedy 1980's.)
And if Google also wants to publish more current, copyrighted books, then the more content providers the merrier, I guess. Let some of them offer books that are ad-supported, others with pretty digital jackets. In other words, let the market breath. - inactive, on 08/23/2009, -0/+4You have to eat the flesh..
- RPGmaster, on 08/23/2009, -0/+4And it makes me sad :(
I've recently started getting to the politics and stuff around the Free Culture movement....
It makes me sad to think that the the country I am about to start contributing to is so corrupt... :(
(I am 15) - CleoQKazoo, on 08/23/2009, -0/+4dude. use firefox.
- acknotSW, on 08/23/2009, -0/+4Companies are becoming too much like politicians. They put more energy into trying to hurt their competition then they do trying to compete with them.
- Cerin, on 08/23/2009, -0/+3I'm not sure why people are calling it the "Open Book Alliance". It's actually called the Open Content Alliance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Content_Alliance
They (the Internet Archive) are in it for pretty much the same reasons as Google, which is to provide indexable content for their site. - sdiama, on 08/23/2009, -0/+3Who you gonna call??? Bookbusters!!!
- Fib0112, on 08/23/2009, -0/+3You know, you have four comments on this thread so far and they are all full of stupid. I'm not talking about a general lack of spelling and grammar knowledge here, more like general ignorance, arrogance and other things that end in -ance. Damn son, reading your comments I got the impression that you know how to fix Digg, you know better how to run a company like Google and are an all around brilliant guy. You say that Google isn't good at innovating. Ok, fair enough. How about you close the Digg tab on your browser then and show us how it's done, eh champ? You seem to know what you're talking about so go out there and shine, you crazy diamond. Maybe when you take over the world with your brilliant mind, you will remember the poor, ignorant masses on Digg and come and say hi. I can only dream.
tl;dr version: STFU - harlowsmonkeys, on 08/23/2009, -0/+2The Open Book Alliance was founded by the Internet Archive. How do you explain their presence here?
- AlyxVance, on 08/23/2009, -0/+2uh good luck with that guys
- SeinfeldQuote, on 08/23/2009, -0/+2Bookman? The library investigator's name is actually, Bookman?
- Domthedude001, on 08/23/2009, -0/+2Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon or not... if it means more free content for me when I need it, I'm all for it!
- wikiworld, on 08/24/2009, -0/+2I love google books. And, its profitable. Good luck competing with that kind of model. If Amazon jumps aboard Microsoft's and Yahoo's sinking ship, they'll deserve what comes to them.
- jamaph, on 08/23/2009, -0/+2FTA: "Both Microsoft and Yahoo have confirmed their intention to join the alliance. Amazon declined to comment because the group hasn't been formally announced yet."
Then why a sensationalist title?
I find it aggravating when the press quotes Google's "Do No Evil policy." Especially on articles that describe Google creating a larger database of searchable knowledge, like cataloging books. Google also has a policy, and I quote "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." - Minyall, on 08/23/2009, -0/+2Buried for Daily Mail.
- Gareth321, on 08/24/2009, -0/+2RPGmaster, the most important thing you can do for society is to NOT BECOME JADED. It's apathy that created this mess. People's lives are too comfortable. Remain in this state of utter disbelief and anger as long as you possible can. The more people that speak out, the more change happens.
- rjc5056, on 08/23/2009, -0/+2ljohnblaze:
couldn't have said it better myself. - coxon, on 08/23/2009, -0/+1The new Sony Reader let's you download from Google Books. I think it's Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo who are being anti-competitive.
Give us more E-readers and more places to get content from please. - xino, on 08/23/2009, -0/+1Everyone who is clueless about the jumping comment box should be dugg up. I just copied clarients comment and pasted it in a comment box to see if it happened and it didn't. While it didn't happen to me this time, I've seen it happen on this browser (Firefox) on this PC (which I use all the time) many times. The only thing I can say is different about my PC now is that I am using Firefox 3.5.2 and maybe, I don't remember for sure, but maybe I never written a long comment in this specific version. I kind of doubt that would have fixed the problem, but who knows.
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