Google Looking To Take On Amazon For Book Searching

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the stirring-the-hornet's-nest dept

After last week’s announcement from Amazon that they were offering full text searches of books, many people started commenting that this was an example of how Amazon was going to be competing with Google in the future. It seems Google has taken that statement to heart. The NY Times is reporting that Google is investigating creating their own version of a full text search of books, and are talking to publishers about getting the same rights Amazon has (though, they’ll face the same legal questions). As Google becomes a larger and larger planet that the tech world revolves around, they’ve become increasingly competitive with all of the big players in the tech world. A decade ago, the “words of wisdom” was that no business wanted to compete with IBM. More recently, no company wanted to compete with Microsoft. Now, perhaps, no company will want to compete with Google. In all cases, though, many companies don’t really have a choice.