Books take time to transport. Their text vanishes and their pages yellow in a rash of foxing. Most important, it’s still shockingly difficult to find information buried in books. Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books. —Gary Wolf
—The Great Library of Amazonia (Wired)
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Ironically, I just logged on to amazon.com today and saw that they're now enabling searches WITHIN books, not just FOR them. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. Will it slow down the server/searcher? Has the envelope been pushed further into author's rights to exclusivity somehow? I just don't know yet.