The Google storm rages on........

I recently discussed the fall out from Google Librarian central, which Steven Cohen had pointed out, had not been written in for 1 year. Well, they have finally responded, and told us there back. But only as a newsletter.
As one critic said:-

They've been thinking about how best to communicate with us, and this apparently is best done by closing the weblog and reverting to a newsletter. Is this one of the first examples of a company dumping Web 2.0 technology in favour of 1.0?

Meredith Farkas has been defending the Google line, saying:-

Some people are up in arms because they feel that Google has some obligation to libraries beyond the contractual obligations to those they’re working with. Some people feel like librarians have been used. I must be missing something, because I don’t feel anything of the kind. Marketing is designed to make you like a company or product. Their marketing worked.

Fair point Meredith, but as a company there making a profit of everyone's culture, there not doing this so we can access information. Google have said that:-

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

ut I'd agree with another view point, that :-

Google's real mission is to organize the world around advertising.

If there doing it on the back of being the only company making books available online, they have a monopoly to decide what goes up and what gets hits. But hell, Marketing is designed to make you like a company.