I think the political benefit of such an arrangement is that in the future, most “libraries” will be corporate for profit access havens. Information there will be organized to meet certain interests, and that methodology won’t calculate ours. But for now, it looks interesting. A fun project would be for someone to go over Google’s material, while comparing it with old school microfiche of the same material.

Web giant Google is further expanding its online empire with the launch of the Google News Archive Search.
The web-based tool allows users to explore existing digitised newspaper articles and more recent online content, spanning the last 200 years.

People using the search are shown results from both free and subscription-based news outlets.

…is it just me, or does the academic in this piece sound like he’s got a gun being pointed at him?

thanks, candy.