Mark's Notebook


	Only a mediocre person is always at his best. - W. Somerset Maugham

Google Plans New Service for Scientists and Scholars

New York Times

Thursday 18 November 2004, 1:36 pm
Keywords: News Articles

By John Markoff

Google Scholar is intended as a first stop for researchers looking for scholarly literature like peer-reviewed papers, books, abstracts and technical reports.

The new Google service, which includes a listing of scientific citations as well as ways to find materials at libraries that are not online, will not initially include the text advertisements that are shown on standard pages for Google search results.

However, company executives say it is likely that advertisements will eventually accompany search results on Google Scholar. One academic publishing executive, John Sack, director of HighWire Press at Stanford University, said that such advertising could be quite profitable.

"The commercial reason for doing this is that you can target areas with high-quality, high-payback ads," Mr. Sack said. "An advertisement that goes next to an article on cloning techniques is probably going to be for services that are pretty expensive."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/technology/18google.html?th

Mark says:

Well, doh! Isn't this what the web was designed for? Except for the ads, of course. Capitalism at its finest.

First, they hijack a free service for commercial and frivolous use. Then they want to charge to use it for its intended purpose.