There has been much hoopla over the launch of Google’s new patent search tool. I am pretty certain all the info was already easily available at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) but hey this is a Google world.
I had to dig deep to find this book related one. A patent for the “Slanted Book” designed in 1974 by Richard A. Kjarsgaard. Here is the diagram:
From what I can make out it looks like the same book design perfected by my dog Roxy who had a brief book chewing phase while a puppy.
Much more important is the article at D-Lib Magazine by David Berman. It is a review of Jean-Noël Jeanneney’s book, Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe. Jeanneney is the President of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which is the equivalent of our Library of Congress, and he voices some serious concerns over Google, a private company, digitizing what it sees fit.
Here is a excerpt that raises the reddest of flags:
Noting that Netscape seemed invincible before the advent of Microsoft IE, but disappeared as a company within years, he asks rhetorically what happens if Google is split up in a monopolies decision, implodes in the market or is sold? Perhaps, we should ask, what if it is sold to the Chinese, who might decide to limit content served to us as Google has recently agreed to limit that served to Chinese citizens?
That should be enough of a concern to immediately derail this car from the Google train and have the public fund and oversee this vital transformation of our written heritage.