When I first heard of this I was enthusiastic. Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive have made a great start on making all information universally available, and Google with many many times the resources could do so much more.
Then, the other day I came across an article by Hal Varian in the October 2005 Communications of the ACM (not online I'm afraid) entitled "Universal Access to Information". As well as being a respected Economist, and the author of Information Rules he is a consultant for Google. His argument is that copyright law should be changed to make it easier for companies (such as Google) to copy works whose copyright is unregistered.
I'm broadly sympathetic to this idea, but must admit to a certain suspicion of Google's motives. Why do they not make the full text of works that are out of copyright available? I would have thought that the "free" version should be the first one returned in any search. There are certainly tens of thousands to millions of works that are out of copyright and which, if searchable by Google and having the full text available would make an immensely powerful resource.
Its very disappointing that they are not doing this. My suspicion is because its not worth their while -- they are after richer pickings.
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