Evan Schnittman of OUP responds to an article in the FT (now behind a subscription wall) on Google digitization:
The reality is we are not running scared from Google – frankly it’s quite the opposite. Through initiatives such as Google Book Search, Amazon’s Search Inside the Book, Microsoft’s Windows Live Book Search and many more, publishers have finally been presented with enough options that make financial sense so we are pursuing our digital future.
What we publishers have come to realise is that Google and friends have opened up the world to our content by showing us that discoverability and access leads to interest and opportunity. Publishers investing millions in asset repositories and digitisation hardly means that they are doing so to spite or protect themselves from Google. [FT.com / Comment & analysis / Letters – Google has opened up world to publishers’ content]
It is interesting to see the strong link made between discoverability and opportunity, and the acknowledgement that discoverability is aligned with visibility in network level discovery services like Google.
