As many bloggers (1, 2, 3) and especially Steven Cohen deliberate the impact of Google Librarian Central blog and its disappearance, it seems little has been said why? Expecially from Google, but other sources. Perhaps google never got around to reading.
Firstly, Steven was not the first one to point out the demise of the blog, as it was discussed way back in January.
Secondly, Google now no longer has any competition from Microsoft in this area any longer. Therefore, the competition has disappeared in May of this year. But this does not still explain why they went 10 months without mentioning it?
In my opinion, Google was always a company and companies there are to make profits, and not to help society live a fruitful existance (unlike librarians). As Charles Arthur had pointed out :-
Google gets the book contents free, gets to sell adverts against them, and the publishers get ... what? The promise that they might sell some more books. It certainly sounds like something for nothing. And once again, it's Google that gets the something, and everyone else who is left scrabbling for the scraps.
Google should at least address this error. If they make a blog for librarians and then dump it, you'll really annoy people (as Steven has shown).
Also, it might make us look less uncritically at Google, and agree with one critic who says google is White bread for young minds
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