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Google Battles The France Microsoft Alliance

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by Felix Salmon
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Dec 06 2007 12:00am EDT

Google Battles the France-Microsoft Alliance

Jonathan Last has an entertaining attack on Google Book Search in the latest Weekly Standard.

Last starts off well, but he does rather disappears off the deep end by the time he finishes, alleging that "Google is trying mightily to deny" the value of books and that it poses "very real" dangers, without ever really saying what those dangers are. He also never asks the obvious question, which is what would happen to Google's web search business model if his preferred view of the book search business is upheld. After all, the copyright questions in both cases are more similar than different. But one can forgive a lot from an article which contains gems like this:

Google has, as they say, all the right enemies. Anytime the ALA, Microsoft, France, a trade guild, and a bunch of trial lawyers are lined up on one side of an argument, the other side is going to look extremely attractive.

(Via TIR)

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