Google battles rivals in race to digitize the world's libraries

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2006

NEW YORK (AFP) — A race is on to digitize the world's books, pitting Internet juggernaut Google against a vast anti-Google coalition backed by rivals Yahoo and Microsoft. In late August, Google restarted its Google Book Search project initiated in 2004 with the lofty aim of scanning every literary work into digital format and making them available online.

Google has formed partnerships with major universities such as Harvard, Oxford, the New York Public Library, Complutense of Madrid and the University of California to add their collections to its virtual book shelves. In mid-October the University of Wisconsin made its extensive selection of historical works available to the Mountain View, California-based Internet powerhouse. Google has stored on its searchable database...