Openness and Google

There's an interesting item on openness on the Google blog - but before everyone gets excited, note that it is about openness in two contexts: open systems and software and openness about the information Google collects about us. It's not about any plans Google may have towards open access to the information it stores. I think we can expect the controversy over Google Book Search to continue as long as Google fails to take my advice (:-) on creating a foundation and making the books openly available.

Google Books again

The ongoing debate about Google Books made it into the Observer yesterday. It picked up on Robert Darnton's argument that because books are our common heritage, their control ought not to be in the hands of a commercial organization.

Google's response to this really could be pretty straightforward: simply establish a not-for-profit "Google Foundation" and put access to Google Books under the Foundation.

But, you say, Google makes money from ads on the Google Books pages, so how would that work? Well, it could still work, all that would have to happen is for Google to pay into the Google Foundation some proportion of the ad revenue gained from Google Books and everyone would be happy. Since Google's unofficial motto is 'don't do evil' a solution like this would demonstrate, clearly, the desire to do good.