Google announced the introduction of the service at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the industry's most important annual meeting, where publishers, authors and their agents convene to buy and sell the rights to publish books in countries worldwide.
The new service would allow users of Google's main search engine to search simultaneously billions of Web pages and the texts of hundreds of thousands of books for information on a given subject. They search works by looking for words or phrases in the scanned digital images of the pages of books that publishers have provided to Google.
For each book found, a user would see several pages of the book with the phrase or subject of the search highlighted. The page would also offer links to several online retailers, where the book could be bought. Publishers do not pay to participate in the program; rather, Google would make money from the service by selling advertising on the search pages, and it would share those revenues with the publishing companies.
I can't imagine why the little bookstores are fading out of the picture? Hardy-har. Change is good, change is good, change is good and when I count my small change I'll have some cash to buy food when my job is gone...teehee. ;)
