While our world is fascinated (or perhaps agog) over the fast and furious* war between HD and Blu-Ray, dredging up long-suppressed memories of the Betamax/VHS skirmishes of the 80s, the world of books has its own little battle brewing. Yes, kids, in this corner, we have Google and its plans to digitize books. In the opposing corner, newly invigorated Yahoo! is looking to get its books digitized first.
This will be a bloody battle. Google is known for its size and awesome opt-out punch. Yahoo, after years of meditating on mountains, has developed a right opt-in hook. This will a battle where nobody will know the score until ten or so years from now. It takes a long time to digitize libraries and whatnot.
What will be interesting to learns is how these competing projects overlap or not. How confusing they will be to consumers (okay, so Mark Twain is where?). And, of course, whether the search giants will index the library results of each other. Yeah, working together would be a much better approach, we agree.
* – Not really. For fast technology, actual physical product is slow coming.
