Google's Books Project: Good or Bad For Us?

Jack Howard


In Serena Golden's question and answer session with Dennis Baron about his book, Golden asks Baron about his apparent "lukewarm" reception to the Google Books Project. In his response, Baron goes on a tirade about the negatives of the project without giving the positive aspects much recognition. His main point is that it will "monopolized text." Baron fears that any entity with this type of power can abuse it to "manipulate the text under its control." What he does not take into consideration is the possible good a "monopolized text" could do.

Google Books, as a monopolized text could do great things for the literary society. By having one entity administrate a large body of texts, the detection of plagiarized works could be streamlined and much more effective. Any new text that wished to be submitted to the database would have to go through a mandatory text check to see if it copied any other work in the database. This would help resolve any case of accused plagiarism. Another positive of a "monopolized text" is fiscal impact it would have for the cost of textbooks for college students. Online books don't have to worry about printing, distribution, and mark-up costs that otherwise raise the price of textbooks at bookstores today. Even if the google books project had a subscription or membership fee, it would only be a single free. Because it would be a "monopolized text," you would only need to get that one subscription instead of having to go online and pay for multiple e-book subscriptions.