the new alexandria

Soon you'll be able to search through whole libraries via Google Print, Google says.

They've taken a page from Amazon, it seems, who scanned in thousands of books to make them searchable. Which books get scanned depends partly on whether the publishers will grant the rights. Google plans to build its own searchable archive of books, with links to booksellers there. If they're linking extensively to sites other than Amazon, this would seem to put the two behemoth dot coms in direct competition. We'll see which is better; if I had any money, I'd put it on Google since they're obviously the tops in searching.

Oh, and by the way, similar privacy issues come up with Google Print as with Gmail: Google Print will track what pages you've seen to keep you from reading entire books online. I'm sure someone will find a hack to get around this, but anyway it'll stymie most people. Google says they won't associate your page-viewing history with any personal information (name, address, etc.). But you have to take that on trust.