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Google takes the competition to school

While rivals scramble to catch up on the desktop, Google plans to digitize famous libraries.

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It’s official. Google is the most dangerous media company on the planet

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. Yesterday’s announcement that the search company will index and catalog books in five of the world’s great libraries is just the latest example of how Google bounces in a new direction every time its competitors seem on the verge of catching up.

The Mountain View, California, search company is digitizing the book collections of Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford Universities, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. This places Google in a whole new arena: the lucrative business of providing premium content and search.

Google hasn’t revealed a business model for its library venture. Indeed, Peter Kosewski, director of publications and communications at Harvard University, said Google is bearing the costs of scanning and indexing 40,000 titles at Harvard. While that number may one day grow to all 15 million books in Harvard’s library, there is no financial agreement between Google and Harvard to split advertising revenue, he said. Google says it isn’t yet selling advertising on the content it is sucking out of libraries like Harvard’s.

rticle.aspx?a=11071&hed=Google+takes+the+competiti on+to+school]Red Herring /more