Google euthanizes newspaper archive scan plan

Google euthanizes newspaper archive scan plan


Google has shut down its five-year old effort to digitizes back issues of the world's newspapers.

On Thursday, The Boston Phoenix, one of the newspapers participating in Google's program, announced that the web giant had sent an email to it and other publishers saying it is no longer accepting, scanning, and indexing microfilm and other archival material from newspapers. Google confirmed the news with The Register.

Google told us that netizens can still search digitized newspapers at its News Archives search page, but said that it does not plan to add additional tools to the Google News Archives, and that it has indeed stopped scanning microfilm from publishers.

Though scanning started two years before, Google officially launched the service in 2008, and it has apparently scanned about 60 million newspaper pages. But according to The Phoenix, the company was slow to scan, and the project operated under a similar cloud to the one that hangs over its library-book scanning project. Yes, that would be the copyright issue.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/20/google_ends_newspaper_scanning_project/

Google suckz

Who knew, who do I sue?

Of course, google has left its "don't be evil" slogan behind, and historical research is a good thing, unless you're a repig. Then you just make it up.