"In Defense of Google Books"

Google is the one juggernaut corporation of the digital age which stands for many of the things I hate and yet which I don't hate at all. I don't know what I'd do without Google Maps, Gmail, Blogspot, Google Sites, and Google Books. I know it's monolithic, a monopoly, a triumph of technology over tradition... and yet, I love everything about it.

But apparently many people are up in arms against Google Books, and for probably all the wrong reasons.

Mark Gimein of Reuters lists some common arguments against Google Books and defuses them in his "Defense of Google Books."

There are a hundred other gems like the story of the Mahdi's peppered fingertips in Gen. Gordon's diary alone, and hundreds of millions of facts are now being uncovered and made accessible by Google's extraordinary project of digitizing millions of books. But these days, when you read about Google Books, you hardly ever-well, never-get to read anything as lively as those kinds of facts and insights. No, what you get, over and over again if you've followed the saga of Google Books, is the story of all the folks fighting The Coming Google Monopoly.