Friday, December 17, 2004

Googluk

It seems that yesterday Google were forcing us to search through the UK domain. If you went to http://www.google.com and you were in the UK then you got diverted to http://www.google.co.uk.

Looking again today, I see that there has been a slight shift of strategy. They must still be detecting that we come from the UK because, the google home page shows a ‘go to Google.uk’ option.

There is more news about Google and it relates to eBooks .....

furthermore...

After more than a year of discussions and negotiations, the University of Oxford has concluded a mass-digitisation agreement with Google, Inc., of Mountain View, California, which should lead, over the next three years in the first instance, to the digitisation of more than 1 million of the Bodleian Library's printed books, and their worldwide availability on the Internet, through Google's popular search services and the Oxford website. Because of copyright restrictions and intellectual property issues, the agreement between Google and Oxford covers only 'public domain' materials (i.e. printed books for which the copyright has expired - principally, books published before 1920), and it will involve the establishment in Oxford, by Google, of a digital scanning and processing unit which, when fully operational, should be capable of producing as many as 10,000 electronic books per week. The scanning operation will lead to the creation of two digital copies of each book: one for Google, and one for Oxford. The Google copy will be fully indexed and searchable through the Google search service, while the Oxford copy will be linked directly to the relevant catalogue record in the Oxford Online Information Service (OLIS). More info at http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/041214a.shtml