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.

An indepth look at Google library blog, or what happened

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