Google’s Loss: The Public’s Gain; New York Review of Books, 4/28/11

Robert Darnton, New York Review of Books; Google’s Loss: The Public’s Gain:

"It is too early to do a postmortem on Google’s attempt to digitize and sell millions of books, despite the decision by Judge Denny Chin on March 23 to reject the agreement that seemed to make Google’s project possible. Google Book Search may rise from the ashes, reincarnated in some new settlement with the authors and publishers who had taken Google to court for alleged infringement of their copyrights. But this is a good time to take a backward look at the ground covered by Google since it first set out to provide access to all the books in the world. What went wrong?"