Internet beheamoth Google, which offers services such as GMail, Google Earth, and a picture editing service, Picassa, has found another niche to carve out for itself: books.
For those of you who loathe treking to the library, Google now enables you to search for a book and topic, and then browse the relevant parts of the book. That's rigt, no more incessant page turning, and you are still able to cite correctly. The University of Texas system also uses such a system now instead of a library made of bricks and mortar.
While students and internet buffs have cheered this development, authors and copyright advocates are not. Many fear they will lose revenues and royalties from their works. A children's hospital in London is worried it will use monies it receives from excluse rights to Peter Pan.
However, Google encourages its users to buy books, putting a link to a site where the book being searched can be bough. In a time when technology is expanding by leaps and bounds, there will be some growing pains. Still, no one can doubt that this latest move by Google will offer greater choice to American and global consumers.
