A Google Search of a Distinctly Retro Kind -NYTimes.com
Google was recently sued in federal court by a large group of authors and publishers who claimed that its plan to scan all the books in the world violated their copyrights. As part of the class-action settlement, Google must locate the authors and grant them the opportunity to opt out of their scanning ambitions, but first they must be found.
Since the copyright holders can be anywhere and not necessarily online — given how many books are old or out of print — it became obvious that what was needed was a huge push in that relic of the pre-Internet age: print.
Google is reportedly spending millions of dollars taking out print newspaper ads in every single country in the world. Crazy.
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