<story><title>What Ever Happened to Google Books?</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-ever-happened-to-google-books?intcid=mod-latest</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blub</author><text>They are improving your life in exchange for information about you and the places you visit. Their product is closed, the proprietary data is not accessible outside their apps, or if they wish to license it.&lt;p&gt;OpenStreetMap is improving the world.</text></item><item><author>blfr</author><text>How is reliable Google Maps and Street View not improving the world? I&amp;#x27;m using them daily and they&amp;#x27;re improving my life a lot.</text></item><item><author>chippy</author><text>The reminds me of people&amp;#x27;s attitudes towards reCAPTCHA -  started by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. &amp;quot;Stop spam, read books.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Everyone was supportive of it when it was used towards the non profit digitization of out of copyright books. So, started externally, Google ran with it and continued and expanded the range of books. It remained good. Apparently loads of books were digitized.&lt;p&gt;Then, possibly along with the change in this article - or along with the perceptible change within Google where everything had to be business accountable a few years back, reCAPTCHA  started being used to digitize address numbers from StreetView to improve Googles online mapping, geocoding offering. Nothing to do with books, nothing to do with improving the world.&lt;p&gt;Now reCAPTCHA is being used for image recognition and training (identify the images with salads). Nothing to do with books, information or improving the world - everything to do with Googles own offerings.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s even sadder is that &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;captcha.net&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;captcha.net&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; still states that it is being used to &amp;quot;help digitize books&amp;quot; but all the links go to &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;recaptcha&amp;#x2F;intro&amp;#x2F;index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;recaptcha&amp;#x2F;intro&amp;#x2F;index.html&lt;/a&gt; which have all but removed any public benefit wording. &amp;quot; &amp;quot;Stop spam, read books.&amp;quot; was removed from Googles site in 2014.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ucaetano</author><text>So by your logic, unless you&amp;#x27;re giving something absolutely for free you&amp;#x27;re not improving the world?</text></comment>
<story><title>What Ever Happened to Google Books?</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-ever-happened-to-google-books?intcid=mod-latest</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blub</author><text>They are improving your life in exchange for information about you and the places you visit. Their product is closed, the proprietary data is not accessible outside their apps, or if they wish to license it.&lt;p&gt;OpenStreetMap is improving the world.</text></item><item><author>blfr</author><text>How is reliable Google Maps and Street View not improving the world? I&amp;#x27;m using them daily and they&amp;#x27;re improving my life a lot.</text></item><item><author>chippy</author><text>The reminds me of people&amp;#x27;s attitudes towards reCAPTCHA -  started by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. &amp;quot;Stop spam, read books.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Everyone was supportive of it when it was used towards the non profit digitization of out of copyright books. So, started externally, Google ran with it and continued and expanded the range of books. It remained good. Apparently loads of books were digitized.&lt;p&gt;Then, possibly along with the change in this article - or along with the perceptible change within Google where everything had to be business accountable a few years back, reCAPTCHA  started being used to digitize address numbers from StreetView to improve Googles online mapping, geocoding offering. Nothing to do with books, nothing to do with improving the world.&lt;p&gt;Now reCAPTCHA is being used for image recognition and training (identify the images with salads). Nothing to do with books, information or improving the world - everything to do with Googles own offerings.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s even sadder is that &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;captcha.net&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;captcha.net&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; still states that it is being used to &amp;quot;help digitize books&amp;quot; but all the links go to &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;recaptcha&amp;#x2F;intro&amp;#x2F;index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;recaptcha&amp;#x2F;intro&amp;#x2F;index.html&lt;/a&gt; which have all but removed any public benefit wording. &amp;quot; &amp;quot;Stop spam, read books.&amp;quot; was removed from Googles site in 2014.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baby</author><text>&amp;gt; They are improving your life in exchange for information about you and the places you visit&lt;p&gt;So they are improving the world and for free. I&amp;#x27;m glad we all agree</text></comment>