A couple of noteworthy tidbits today:
The New York Times has revealed that Amazon is planning to post texts online.
The Times did not specify how much of a book's text will be made available (a single chapter, perhaps?) – only that Amazon "plans to limit how much of any given book a user can read."
The potential for Amazon's site is huge. Currently a massive library of dustcovers, the site could overtake Google in the area of depth of content.
Unlike Google however, the web's biggest retail brand may require users to register before it can search and read book texts, a move that may inhibit the success of the project.
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Google, meanwhile, forges ahead with small but significant additions to its own site. The latest is an advanced search feature on the News search, which lets you limit your search to publications that appeared on a particular date, or date range, and to specify the country of origin of the publication.
It may not sound exciting, but it's bound to be useful to somebody, somewhere. Good ol' Google.
Comments
1 comments
Are Amazon planning to charge for registration? Or is registration just a way of stopping Google and others of caching their site, and all the text of the books?
I think the success or failure of Amazon's venture will be determined by how much of the books they put online. For a whole book, I'd gladly pay money but for a chapter or two, I'm not so sure.