This article explains Google's lengthy (and now discontinued) process of scanning all the books. The process was begun in order to provide snippets in search results, and led to a legal battle between Google and the Author's Guild. The compromise that resulted was huge: Google would be able to provide books for public digital purchase and download at author (or algorithm, if the author could not be found)-set prices, and a percent of proceeds would go to the authors. This would publicize out-of-print books and give institutions of learning that purchased subscriptions access to an unparalleled database of literary works. The main concern was that Google would have a monopoly, although this was countered by the argument that Amazon is currently the largest source of online purchased reading material.
OH MY JESUS.
ALL THE BOOKS.
This article is very long, but it's a flipping rollercoaster. You know from the start that it isn't going to end in victory, but you keep reading because you can't quite believe it and because you want it to go "surprise! They're resuming scanning all the books! The database is no longer locked away!!!" but it doesn't and you almost cry a few times and you still keep hoping.
For me, books are a way to put aside my own worries and fully immerse into someone else's world. And at the same time they're grounding. There is no feeling quite like that of slamming back to the earth at the end of a chapter, of a novel, of a trilogy. I remember my own life, my own troubles, my own aspirations, in a sudden rush.
Or perhaps the feeling of realizing, mid-rising action, that I have experienced exactly what the protagonist (or, more often, the antagonist) is going through.
In today's society, books are not given enough credit. Literature is tossed aside in favor of crap telly that uses the same plots and tropes, except sans-finesse. (I'm not saying all television is bad, but too many shows these days jump the shark and only serve as groundling fodder to begin with, or blatantly mock and appropriate minority culture and lifestyles coughHowIMetYourMothercough.)
Yes, Google would have gotten a large advantage. But many proposed giving the rights Google would've been given to businesses like Google in general. This was called too extreme, but a few years later was done regarding the publicity rights of former sports stars.
And now 25,000 books are sitting in a database that nobody can use.
I just want to read all the books.
I love books.
Harry Potter's squad and the Merry Men and Watson were my only friends for over seven years.
Books are great.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/
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