DesireesShelves

"We must build the sort of online ecosystem that can benefit the whole world over the long term, not one that serves the short-term interests of one powerful company, no matter how brilliant."

"The Google Books plan is a perfect example of public failure." If they are allowed to continue, Google will "own" the rights to all books! It's one thing to allow people to view books online that have expired copyright, however, Google would be the only place that these books would be available! Even copyright holders would not have a say in this! This is definitely NOT a good plan and we must stop this!

Google becomes our memory! Why bother to memorize anything, if you can look it up and find the answer instantaneously? Not to mention the privacy issues (the author argues that privacy no longer exists) when something you posted online years ago can come back to haunt you?

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with Google. I love that I can find whatever I need, however, they have been working on blocking access to lots of sites, in particular, sites that aggregate news stories from other sites... It's never good to have a monopoly on anything and if Google is allowed to have that monopoly over our collective knowledge and past, that can not be a good thing!

Interesting read!