Ah. The Google Books fiasco. I’ve seen it in the news, have been quietly monitoring the situation, but I just read Sergey Brin’s editorial in the New York Times. One bit of language at the end really caught my attention:
(Emphasis added by me, removed bibliographic and classification system portions: see original)
The rough translation: You are not going to like our privacy policy, and if so, then you’ll have to go elsewhere to read our books. Some “competitor” will do it in a way you’ll like.
Or, even shorter: PFO
People are lazy. Use Gmail, Google Reader, Google’s free web applications, iGoogle, Picasa, YouTube, Google Desktop and give away pretty much your entire digital collection of information to Mountain View, CA.
Really? If you decide to monitor my book reading, then I should go to others?
Gee thanks. I’ll just yank out my billion dollars out of the bank account, and go digitize a library, put it online, and start using that instead.
And, what’s the financial incentive to do this? Oh right, so that I can appease the vocal minority of whiners (hey!) who give a shit about having every book they’re reading (when, where, what page, how fast) being monitored and monetized?
Note they’re further detailing instead of completely rewriting. Let me enter my happy world with the pink sky and not evil corporations: How about you keep my shit private, all of the time? No?
The state of privacy on the internet is crap.