Google Labs has done it again -- this time, with Similar Images -- capability that puts a Similar Images link below relevant thumbnails in Google's image search results. By clicking the Similar Images link, Google then provides a fairly accurate refinement of your image search. Totally cool!
Yeah, google has done a lot of neat things, but I'm getting increasingly worried about the now-shareholder-owned profit-above-all-else potential behind the private 'deals' they struck with some of the best research libraries, authors, etc. Imagine: creating the biggest book monopoly in the world, likely effective in perpetuity, without ever needing to file a single copyright claim, renewal, or go before any accreditation body. Scary. As Darnton put it in the NY Review of Books: "If approved by the court—a process that could take as much as two years—the settlement will give Google control over the digitizing of virtually all books covered by copyright in the United States." And it puts this corp firmly in control, control being the deciding factor in all ownership rights. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281
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