Google Begins to Scale Back Its Scanning of Books From University Libraries

By Jennifer Howard

http://chronicle.com/article/Google-Begins-to-Scale-Back/131109/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

“Google has been quietly slowing down its book-scanning work with partner libraries, according to librarians involved with the vast Google Books digitization project. But what that means for the company’s long-term investment in the work remains unclear.

Google was not willing to say much about its plans. “We’ve digitized more than 20 million books to date and continue to scan books with our library partners,” a Google spokeswoman told The Chronicle in an e-mailed statement.”

Read the piece.  Google has made several abortive attempts at library strategies and pulls back.  There are lists lately of over 50 products that are on hiatus or closed.  Microsoft has too.  Their MS book scanning and academic search product ended a few years ago.  Many libraries have chosen strategies to depend on Google for some parts of their services, not the least reason of which was price.  Does Google have enough personal data and content now from the book scanning project to drive the ads they need?  Have they got their critical mass?  Sponsored content / content spam company DirectMedia president once said they best way to drive ads was to convert all the books already written. What becomes of Google Scholar that many libraries teach and encourage their students to use?

I still say that there is a big difference between partnering with someone who has a business revenue model aimed at supporting libraries and education and one whose business model is dependent on acquiring eyeballs and personal usage behaviours to drive ads and search engine results.

Stephen