� Search results will include a book's cover, text in the original font and layout, and links to purchase the book.

I wonder what exactly this means.

I am not sure how the quality of the scanned books will be, but hopefully good enough to evaluate if you want to make the effort to see the book in person.

Upon further evaluation, print.google.com makes some sketchy implications...

Q) Does Google keep track of the pages I'm viewing?

A) In order to enforce content viewing limits, we must keep track of page views by our users. However, we do not associate any of your searches, or the specific pages you view, with personally identifiable information about you, such as your name or address.

Yet another thing to make me flip-flop back and forth about how I feel regarding new technologies...

r.k

content viewing limits

I'm sorry, that book about typefaces is too popular. Perhaps you'd rather read something about knitting.

::that book about typefaces is too popular::

Something we'll never have to worry about.

Gee, THANKS, Rob... ;->
I came back from 3 days in Tahoe to find a 250-post wrench in my routine*, and now this!

* Using the term loosely, I admit.

--

They must be using OCR, right? Pretty error-prone if you ask me. Which doesn't make the idea useless - in fact I find it pretty exciting, being more of a content (non-visual) guy. Or will they be doing the pitchurz too somehow?

hhp

dang, I am glad I don't ever have to go to Tahoe for three days. Come to think of it, it is probably good I never leave my cubicle.

...

I have no idea how this is going to work, but it sounds amazing. Presumably they are scanning the entire page, images and all, with the text being searchable.

http://print.google.com/googleprint/example_lg.gif

I am wondering how you digitize 7 million books in 6 years "non-destructively." That is rather impressive.

>I am wondering how you digitize 7 million books in 6 years "non-destructively." That is rather impressive.

With some sort of secret, super-cool machine, obviously�

Yeah, it's called College: a really big machine filled with desperate minimum-wage labor.

hhp

Hmm� I'll bet dollars to donuts that all of this work will be done by college students, too. But even though college students are cheap, there is cheaper labor on the market, sadly enough. I've been in and out of college & grad schools since 1997, and all students I know get more than minimum wage (even if it is just something paltry, like 50 cents more per hour�).

Sounds like the work Adobe spin-off Octavo used to do during the golden age of CD-ROM. High-res scans and a searchable backing-store of the text of cool old books.

Si

This is a company that is in my city that has developed some tech around digitizing books.

http://www.kirtas-tech.com

Mike

> With some sort of secret, super-cool machine, obviously�


that is a super-cool machine


r.k

A bit more on this here: 'Googleizing' libraries won't replace books, (Adair Lara, San Francisco Chronicle)

"Google claims to have a new whiz-bang way to do it -- there won't be some luckless employee feeling her brain cells die as she flattens a book on a cranky copier page by page. It won't say exactly what its method is."